READING ON A SEA JOURNEY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3898, 27 November 1928, Page 72

READING ON A SEA JOURNEY.

It was a third-class ship. The fares were third class, the food was third class, the accomodation was third class, but the passengers were drawn from every class under the sun. A good proportion of them were ex-officers, well-edu-cated men, who, finding no scope for their special abilities at home, were venturing to South Africa and Australia on a one-class liner. There is no library, no reading room, no writing room on a third-class liner. The big shipping companies have failed to understand the mentality of the modern emigrant. Anpng a‘ thousand passengers bound for the Cape and Australia, at least one-third were reading people interested in literary and intellectual subjects. * * * I was struck by the number of people who thke books of poetry on a long sea trip. On the first day out of England before wc were through the bay, the magic of sunshine brought out summer frocks and well-bound, new-looking volumes of poetry. I counted six on the first occasion; before the end of the week I had counted 15.

The tastes of poetry readers are as varied as the motives that prompt them to select poetry as an accompaniment of a long ocean passage. Some read poetry because they cannot live without it. Others because the long voyage presents such horrors of ennui that 'even poetry might be tolerated for a change. Others again, read poetry because their sentimental friends gave them books of poetry as parting gifts. In one little group that met on deck every day I recall readings from the “Australian Book of Verse,” the “Anth-

ology of Modern Verse,” with Robert Lynd’s introduction, the “ Oxford Book of English Verse,” and many others from Milton to Kipling. * * * There were the enthusiasts of the moderns, who forked hard to make the uninitiated enthusiastic. It was a revel'ation to see the effect of the new style of poetry upon the minds brought up on the classical poets; they resisted and objected and refused to understand. Those, on the other hand, who had never cultivated their rhythmic sense, fell victims to the new style when it was properly- read. The new poets have set themselves a difficult task if they intend to capture the reading public. Another group that interested me was that of the readers of fiction. “If Winter Comes ” was the favourite novel on board; I counted three copies. The book makes a good jumping-off place for conversation on novels. It is a book about which opinions generate easily. There is a touch of idealism in most people which responds to the main theme of the story, so that conversation was always easy among those who had read it. The majority of the fiction-readers .were not enthusiastic about modern novels. I gathered that though the average reader does not go to fiction to be helped, either morally or intellectually, he does object to being confused or depressed. Many- of my fellovv-voy'agers had experienced a rather hard time since their demobilisation, and were not in the mood for anything that tended to obscure still more their cloudy outlook. I saw a volume of Walpole, a volume of Rose Macaulay, a volume of W. J. Locke, of Stephen Leacock. The fictionreaders on a long voyage hark back to Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot. This preference for the Victorians might not be entirely a matter of literary taste. On the one-class liner most passengers are not well off, 'and the price of the modern novel might be a sufficient explanation of its absence. It seems a pity that the booksellers do not arrange with large shipping concerns, whose ships carry a thousand passengers for six weeks, to set up a bookstall on board. * * * One day I pitched my chair close to a man who seemed satisfied with his own company, and waited for a pause in his absorption of two large illustrated volumes. “You are doing a lot of reading?” I said to him. “ I am,” he replied. “I have set myself. the task of mastering the history of the universe before I reach Australia.” He smiled, and handed me the twovolume edition of “ The Outline of History.” “ I am going to a small farm,” he said, “ a hundred miles from anywhere. In that wide country a man can become very narrow-minded. I don’t want to get out of touch with things. I have been too busy- at home to keep up my reading. I am going to start afresh.”— E. G. Miles, in an exchange.