BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3828, 26 July 1927, Page 74

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

THE DANCE OF LIFE. “ Morris in the Dance.” By Ernest Raymond. (Cloth, 7s Gd net.) London: Cassell and Company, Limited. Ernest Raymond is one of the novelists of to-day on whom one can rely to be interesting. His stories have substance and vivacity; his people are real, and all in different ways elicit sympathy or interest. Probably there will be a good deal of difference of opinion as to the merit of this novel compared with its predecessors. In it, as in all Mr Raymond’s novels, the main interest lies in the development of a personality. It is a biographical character novel, in which we follow’ the life story of the central character from the age of seven through some 20 years. But here Dlr Raymond has introduced a new plot interest in the way of mystery involving the origins of Morris and other chief characters, the mystery being cleared up towards the close of the story. Morris awakens to knowledge of life in Temple Gowring, a town on the South Down country styling itself “the Queen of watering places.” He is introduced as a small, puny child of seven, with a face older than his years, who still takes his surroundings unquestioningly. He has been brought up by his stout,' indolent, incapable Aunt Lecky, who receives paying guests,” and presses Morris into service as dish washer and knife cleaner. His playmate is Ailie, a little girl of similar age, overflowing with health and spirits, who has been brought up by his widowed and well-to-do Aunt Rose. A third aunt, sister to the other two and a solitary spinster, shelters a Mr Cordelwain, who to the children at this stage fills the role of a genial uncle, though he is not given that title. Mr Cordelwain, who is quite a success in humorous portraiture, is, as Morris learns later, a ne’er-do-well—a happy irresponsible. When the war comes, he enlists in the Labour Battalion, but finds life with it quite impossible, and turns up again at Aunt Irene’s, putting her in the undesired position of harbouring a deserter. Morris first makes acquaintance with the evil in life when he goes to school and is victimised by in older boy with a

bent for cruelty. His education is unpractical, and the best part comes from his own solitary reading of standard fiction and poetry when he is supposed to be studying for a scholarship, zls he much later learns, Aunt Lecky has muddled away the sum of £l5OO which should have given him a good education and start in life. The artist in Morris awakes when Mr Cordelwain treats the family party to a performance of a musical comedy. At 1G he gets employment in a large stationer’s shop, does yell; gets free from Aunt Lecky; is put in charge of a new art department (his own suggestion) in his employer’s shop, and begins to save money with a view to the realisation of a daring ambition —notiiing less than the establishment of a theatric of his own. He has no hope of ever acting himself, but he will realise his conception of what a theatre should be. Io a circle of friends he expounds his ideas. A theatre should be a place “ where the moving beauty of life is distilled for the comfort and education of men, as a means of convincing them of the thrillingness of all life, and the lovableness of all people.” He finances the enterprise, and his friends supply the acting talent. He begins by staging Greek plays which make a sensation in Temple Gowring, and for a few weeks he knows the delight of success. But interest slackens, and exception is taken to the morality of his plays, and a season of play from the Russian is a total failure.

Meanwhile Morris has been fascinated by the dancing of a Russian girl seen at another theatre, and he persuades her to study acting under him and take the part of Nina in Tehekov’s play, “ The Seagull.” Their love for one another, their union—irregular, since “ Pandora ’’ is a deserted wile—and the adverse fortunes against which they battle form material for the remainder of the book. It is for the sake of Pandora when she is dying of consumption that Morris himself stricken with the disease, forces from Aunt Lecky the true story of his birth, and then forces from his wealthy relative the money which will enable 1 andora to die in peace. Morris has met with hardness enough in life, and has been disappointed of mental and spiritual kinship even in the woman he loves. But when Aihe asks him if he still believes in the goodness of life and the lovable-. ness of all men, he answers unhesitatingly, “ les, I do.”

for RICHER, FOR POORER.” “The Marriage of Anne.” By Concordia Merreh (Cloth, 7s 6d net.) .London: Hodder and Stoughton.

This is a fair sample of the ordinary woman s novel—one written by a woman tor the ordinary woman reader. The wnter has had practice, as a flyleaf beats the titles of a large number of previous novels of her pen. The heroine, Anne Maitland, appears at a costume dance attired in a flame-coloured dress decorated with ostrich feathers of every shade, of tawny from pale gold to deep tangerine, that fluttered and foamed around the slenderest of flame-coloured silk-stockinged legs, and with a dashing head-dress of plumes floating and fluffing about tawny, shingled hair polished to a metallic gloss. “What a clinking girl!” says Scott Kentish, a rather dandified and supercilious young man of 25, as he watches her thus arrayed surrounded by a crowd of admirers eager for dances, and she becomes his “ flame girl ” from that moment. Anne is “gloriously young,” and possessed of an exuberant confidence ii herself; in life generally and of the good things of life particularly. They fall mutually in love, and, though another girl does her best to separate them, are speedily engaged, and since Scott is in a very good way of business are married in a few weeks. They settle in a nice London flat, and for a time life goes rosily. But Scott speculates rashly, and a few months sees a startling reverse of their fortunes. Both have been improvident, and they arc not only without means, but heavily in debt. Anne now is obliged to encounter something rather worse than love in a cottage—of which she had refused to entertain the idea. They go into two scrubby little furnished rooms, which Anne, though she has been brought up to small means, finds it impossible to keep tidy, while her cooking is bad enough to try the temper of a less exacting man than Scott. As he fails to got another position, Anne sensibly goes into a millinery business with a friend. Neither of them bears adversity well, but Scott much the worse of the two; he gives his wife cause for jealousy, and when there is a prospect of a baby shows himself in a very poor light. But Anne’s Aunt Amy comes to the rescue with her practical good sense and helpfulness, and Scott’s better nature asserts itself. The story closes with the promise of married happiness for the young couple who have learned through adversity sounder ideals of life. A WORLD CONSPIRACY. “The Hidden Kingdom.” By Francis Boeding. (Cloth, 7s 6d net.) London : Hodder and Stoughton. Most of the charactera in this highlysensational story have filled principal parts in the author's previous romance, “ The Seven Sleepers.” About. two years are supposed to have elapsed since the exciting drama there related came to a close, and Thomas Preston, who is made the narrato”, is happily married to Beatrice, its heroine, but this does not deter him from adventuring his life anew in com-

pany with his friends, the quixoticaliychivalrous Gascon, Gaston de Blanchegarde, and the cqually-intrepid and mueh-cooler-headcd Etierihe Rehmy. These two, who are both in the French Secret Intelligence Service, are trying to find a clue to the whereabouts of Professor Krcutzemark, the conspirator of the “ Seven Sleepers,” who mysteriously vanished, and is being sought for by the police of half a dozen nations. * The friends meet in Spain, where, after various sensational happenings, they find the professor in the guise of Graf von Konigsberg, as the guest of a Spanish nobleman.

Sensation follows sensation. The heroine, Mademoiselle de Polhac, consents to be formally betrothed to the professor in order to save the lives of her friends, and immediately after the professor vanishes to unknown lands, taking his promised bride with him. Rehmy gets a clue to his destination and his intentions by discovering an ancient Latin manuscript, which tells of a great king, the “ Lord of Fear,” confined in a subterranean kingdom in Tartary till a deliverer shall release him to be a greater Genghis Khan, leading the Mongolian hordes to overrun the Western world. The professor, as they rightly guess, intends to take advantage of the superstitions of the Mongolians to play the part of the “ Lord of Fear ” and devastate decadent Western nations. The friends organise an expedition to Mongolia, and a sensational history follows. They are taken prisoners by the German, von Hefflebach, who fills the role of the legendary Deliverer, and go through trials and perils calculated to test the most heroic metal. The closing scenes are highly dramatic, and by a sudden turn the great conspiracy dissolves into thin air, and the adventures of heroes and heroine terminate happily. The story is well told, and, taken as a romance exempt from all considerations of probability, may be read with enjoyment.

THE BOXING RING. “Bold Bendigo.” By Paul Herring. (Cloth, 6s net.) London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Company, Ltd. per Robertson and Mullens, Ltd. Obtainable from Messrs Duncan and Simpson, Limited. Tn form rather like Jeffery Farnol’s tales, “Bold Bendigo” is set in the days of the Georges, when a gentleman proved himself worthy of the name by being what nowadays we should call a “sport.” Bendigo is a peasant youth possessing great skill in the management of his fists. At the fair he fights in the ring with the Newcastle youth, defeats him, and goes to receive the prize of £5 offered for such a victory. Under the spell of a gipsy girl with cherry-coloured ribbons who says she is the Newcastle youth's sister, he agrees to accept £3 down and the rest later, thereby proving himself in love. At the request of the Duke of Limbs, who sees him sparring with his trainer one morning, Bendigo goes to Ramsdale House, after which his fame as a fighter grows apace. He meets the Fighting Tinman (Ben Gaunt) and similar pugilists, after which he joins a travelling boxingbooth along with some gipsies. Here he renews acquaintance with Cherry Ribbons, and has some exciting adventures with jealous villains, included among whom are several of the nobility.

Buck Castleton, of noble birth but evil reputation, is one of his enemies, and, after Cherry Ribbons leaves the troupe and becomes a barmaid, he makes love to her and plans an elopement. Bendigo stops this, and goes to Liverpool to train. Here he is unfairly beaten bv his old adversary, Ben Gaunt, and, feeling that in losing the fight he is unworthy of her. Cherry Ribbons marries Buck Castleton, while Bendigo’s colours, which he had sent her. are nailed up derisively by her husband. Later in a big fight against Deaf Burke. Bendigo wins b-'ok his ribbons, much to the sorrow of Cherry Ribbons, who realises she loves him after all. When he wins the belt from Jem Ward and becomes champion of England, his triumph is complete. The tale is a li'-elv one, and will make a particular appeal to sporting men. A SYDNEY NUMBER. “Art in Australia: A Quarterly Magazine.” Edited by Sydney Ure Smith and Leon Gellert. (Pancr. nq net.) Sydney: Art in Australia, Limited. “ Curious little lanes and by-ways, unexpected little glimpses of shipping and the harbour, steep, almost incredible, hills, grinding trams ami busy motors climbing noisily towards the sky between blocks of uncompromising flats, drives along the harbourside, Chinamen’s gardens, golf links, houses built on rock, defying the wind, in company with the stunted gum trees, common to the const—and always the patch of blue harbour. Hills, noise, traffic, narrow streets, careless pedestrians, yellow cabs, the harbour at night, ferries darting in a tangle into the liarbour from Circular Quav. Tall buildings, ugly buildings, here and there a dignified structure; wharves, masses of deep-sea liners, cargo boats, ships from everywhere. Crowded houses on the foreshores, badlv designed but curiously interesting. Manly, a surfing village with a gav Continental touch; Bondi, an ocean beach with a background of nasty cheap shops. The city at night—a mass of trams, taxis, gav people—always an air of excitement, bustle, and movement.”

Thus the editorial describing Svdnev, “ the City of the Seas,” in the latest number of Art in Australia, and introducing at the same time the poems, article, and pictures descriptive of the tow’n and Tier moods with which the

magazine is filled. This is a “Sydney Number ” from cover to cover, and the first book of recent years which has been published to give one any idea of this gem of Australian towns. No attempt has hitherto been made to make a com-” pichensive study either in pictures orprose of the city, so that this issue of Art in Australia will be welcomed as an interesting record of the largest town in the Commonwealth.

Its pictures are beautiful, and have been culled from every source in order tq give the desired eneet of completeness. Sydney Harbour from Mosman Bay presented as “ The Dream Morning” in an oil painting by Elioth Gruner, whq has caught to perfection the elusive blues and heliotropes which would characterise such a scene. “ The Harbour from Point Piper ’ is a similar scene at mid-noon, when elusiveness has given place to definite colour. It is shown in an oil painting by Arthur Streeton, while Millet s Point,” an oil by Blamire Young, is a beautiful thing of greys and greens and purples. The last coloured plate is “ Sun Bath,” by Fred Leist, and gives a marvellous impression of heat and light. Etchings, watercolours, wood, cuts, pencil drawings, and photographs have been used to illustrate other aspects of the city, while the poetry and prose is in harmonious keeping with the ex. cellence of the whole. This is undoubtedly a fine number.