A Literary Log.

Southland Times, Issue 18975, 23 June 1923, Page 9 (Supplement)

A Literary Log.

(BY

“IOTA”)

A NEW ENGLAND STORY—Underthe •en-name of John Ayscough there is thinly ridden a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, the Rt. Rev. Count BickerstaffeDrew, an Englishman who ha* distinguished himself in ecclesiastical matter*, in war and in literature. Count Bickerstatfe-Drew is entitled to wear the Mons Medal, and as John Ayscough he has literary distinctions of a hight order. Pick up a novel bearing his name on the title page and you will be sure of a scholarly effort, of a finely-wrought style which is graceful and full of subtleties. He does not go in for fireworks, nor does he tolerate the dullness of the merely accurate, but with a few lines he can reveal character without letting his reader know that he has paused in the march of the story to accomplish that very necessary task. John Ayscough is not one of the “great"’ novelists of the day in that his name is not to be- found among “those present” at the bouquet-exchanges which leave us staggered by the ease with which a writer of novels changes into the garb of a press agent, but you can find entertainment of a fine order, high comedy, in his novels feeling all the while the precious quality of the materials with which he weaves. His latest work to reach me is “Dobachi,” a story of New England, and the Trelosians, the descendant* of some Pilgrim Fathers from Cornwall, who established themselves on that part of the New England coast which smashed the timbers of their crazy vessel after its terrible voyage across the Atlantic. Dobachi’s father was Ichabod Sluts, a descendant of Zechariah Trelose and Miriam Menhenrick, who led the Cornish pilgrims to America, but he was a simple soul of whom the people of Zennor took small notice, except as a subject for a mingling of pity and contempt. Ichabod detested his name and his daughter he christened with the name reverse, to suggest that with her the glory which had previously departed was to return. Dobachi was a beautiful girl and Ichabod was proud of her, so that he had taken much joy from her development to exquisite girlhood before he joined his ancestors. Captain Podd, an old mariner in the village, had been Ichabod’s closest friend and he looked after Dobachi and her mother. It was through Podd that Bony Trogg, two years her senior, was ultimately brought into the range of her smiles and through Dobachi that Rony found a stranger, a young priest, who brought happiness to them both. Arnold Bennett has said that it is the faithfulness of the characters which makes a novel live and if what he says is correct, “Dobachi” will not easily be forgotten. It is not a great novel, certainly, but the people who move in the simple story it tells, are very real and very lovable. Ichabod himself is a piece of clean-cut portraiture, showing us the development away from the harshness of the Trelosians, and the source of Dobachi’s beautiful character. These are simple folk, and untroubled by worrying complexes or jangling nerves, but the author lifts them out of drab mediocrity by the kindly discernment with which he reveals them. Dobachi and Rony are also well done. The girl is never mamby, never insipid—she is gentle and sweet but not subjectively so—and the boy belongs to life. There is atmosphere in this story, and in it such characters as Captain Podd, and Joanna, the school teacher, fit naturally. “Dobachi” is a charming piece of work from the hand of a scholar and a skilled novelist. No one will be disappointed wi’h it. It is published by Chapman and De id, whence came my copy through the Australasian Publishing Co., of Sydney.

SERIOUS THOUGHT—There has come into my bands the second issue of the Australasian Journal of Psycholog;,- and Philosophy published in Sydney under the editorship of Mr Francis Anderson, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the University of Sydney. It is a valuable contribution to serious thought in Australia and /'ew Zealand and is a welcome addition to the periodicals published in this part of the world. It is published quarterly and in the June number one finds at the head of the table of contents an article by Sir Robert Stout on “The need of Courage.” The world is in need of courage, declares the Chief Justice, to face out firmly the problems before it, determining as far as it can what is right and holding steadfastly to that course. It is an interesting pronouncement couched in popular language, and in that sense far different from Bertrand Russell's article on “Vagueness,” which nevertheless is exceedingly interesting. There are three chapters devoted to psycho-analysis an 1 then we have two examinations of mod rn politics, one “Plato’s Laws and Modern Legislation” by Mr A. J. Hanan, of the University of South Australia, and the other “Democracy and Statesmanship” by Mr F. A. W. Gisborne, of Tasmania. This is the first magazine of the kind published in Au. rralia and it is interesting to learn that the first number w-as sold out so quickly thi.t a second impression has been ordered. My copy comes through McNaughton’s.

INGENIOUS MELOD R A Wl A.-Ronald Pertwee in “Out to Win” gave us a melodrama that was full of ingenuity. From the opening sentences it moved breathless with interest, without at any time showing signs of undue stress, and so I turned to his “The Eagle and the Wren” with some confidence this week. It is a worthy successor to “Out to Win” until the last chapters, when jt becomes as wild and woolly as an American movie. The story is written round Martyn Saville, who has invented a machine which can hover, and therefore, promises to make war so terrible that the nations will abandon it as a method of discovering the rights and wrongs of interDational disputes. One wonders if peace can be attained by making war terrible. Mankind in the mass is not cowardly and it is possible that additions to frightfulness will simply make wars more terrible, without stopping them. The race between the gun and armour has been going on for many years, and the contest will not stop because it has been transferred to the air. Pertwee’s hero is guarded by ingenious detectives while he is completing his plans, because the Bolsheviks are anxious to procure his designs in order to be in a commanding position when they seek to convince the world of the soundness of their doctrines. The Bolshie has taken the place occupied by the Germans in the pre-war days and is now the sinister gentleman in diplomatic and political intrigues. One of the men guarding Saville is George Wedderton. a resourceful soul who succeeds in worming his way into the confidence of the Bolshie agents and plays an unconventional part in the operations which lead to the abstraction of the plans. The chgse then begins and it carries the combatants across the Channel to the Continent where an artful Brazilian dancer —born and educated in Whitechapel—takes an important hand with the aid of Robert Browning’s collected poems. Martyn’s fiancee is Leslie Kavanagh, a modern girl who hides a lot of horse-sense under a surface of irresponsibility, and she comes brilliantly into the

Invercargill, June 23, 1923. business in the concluding portions when the final clash between the spies and Martyn and his colleagues takes place. It would be unfair to Pertwee to disclose to the plot, but one can quite safely congratulate him on the ingenuity with which he ha* twisted and turned the thread of his story, without cloudjng it at any point, until the end when the villain of the story, Otto von Weisenberg, behaves in a manner which unfits him fcr the service in which he is engaged and meets the fate his carelessness deserves. It is full of interest and holds the attention at every point, which means that it can be taken with advantage as a companion on a railway journey or used to help the hours in front of a comfortable 6re. “The Eagle and the Wren” is published by Cassell, my copy coming through the Bible Depot.

HANS ANDERSEN'S MAGlC.—Probably, even in his fairy-tales Hans Andersen has always appealed to men and women as strongly as to children. We hear occasionally of children who cannot be reconciled to him because of his incurable habit of pathos . . . Hans Andersen is surely the least gay of all writers for children. He does not invent exquisite confectionery for the nursery such as Charles Perrault, having heard a nurse telling the stories to his little son, gave the world in

“Cinderella” and “Bluebeard. ” To read stories like these is to enter into a game of make-believe, no more to be taken seriously than a charade. The Chinese lanterns of a happy ending seem to iliuminate them all the way through. But Hans Andersen does not invite you to a charade. . . .He is more like a child’s Dickens than a successor of the ladies and gentlemen who wrote fairy-tales in the age of Louis XIV and Louis XV. He is like Dickens, indeed, not only in his compassion, but in his abounding inventiveness, his grotesque detail, and his humour. He is never so recklessly cheerful as Dickens with the cheerfulness that suggests eating and drinking. He makes us smile rather than laygh aloud with his comedy. But how delightful is the fun at the end of ‘Soup on a Sausage Peg” when the Mouse King learns that the only way in which the soup can be made is by stirring a pot of boiling water with his own tail!. . . But Andersen’s genius as a narrator, as a grotesque inventor of incident and comic detail, saves his gospel from commonness. He may write a parable about a darningneedle, but he succeeds in making his darn-ing-needle alive, like a dog or a schoolboy. He endows everything he sees—china shepherdesses, tin soldiers, mice and flowers — with the similitude of life, action and conversation. He can make the inhabitants of one’s mantelpiece capable of epic adventures and has a greater sense of possibilities in a pair of tongs or a door-knocker than most ol us have in men and women. . . He loves imagining elves no higher than a mouse’s knee, and mice going on their travels leaning on sausage-skewers as pilgrims’ staves, and little Thumbelina, whose cradle was “a neat-polished walnut-shell . . blue vilot-leaves were her mattresses, with a rose-leaf for a coverlet.” His fancy never becomes lyrical or sweeps us off our feet, like Shakespeare’s in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” But there was nothing else like it in the fairy-tale literature ni the nineteenth century. And his pages are full of the poetry of flights of b’rds More than anything else one thinks of Hans Andersen as a lonely child watching a flight of swans or storks till it is lost to view, silent and full of wonder and sadness. Mr Edmund Gosse, in the “Two Visits to Denmark,” a book in which everything is interesting except the title, describes a visit which he paid to Hans Andersen at Copenhagen in his old age, when "he took me out into the balcony and bade me notice the long caravan of ships going by in the Sound below—‘they are like a flock of wild swans,’ he said.” The image might might have occurred to anyone, but it is specially interesting as coming from the mouth of Hans Andersen, because it seems to express so much of his vision of the world. He was, above all men of his century, the magician of the flock of wild swans.—Robert Lynd, m “Books and Authors.”

LORD CARNARVON AND IRELAND.— After thirty years at the Local Government Board in Ireland, Sir Henry Robinson has many interesting things to tell us about that country in his book: “Memories: Wise and Otherwise” (Cassell and Co.), which has just been published. Lord and Lady Carnarvon, he says, were always open to the stor/ of Irish distress. Lady Carnarvon once sent Sir Henry a huge bale of children’s clothing for the Inishkea Islanders. They were nearly all “Little Lord Fauntleroy suits,” and some labelled “Bon Ton” and “Latest from Paris.” Father Healy, of Achill, came to Dublin to make a personal appeal for his parishioners. Lord Carnarvon promised that everything possible should be done, and sent Sir Henry down to make inquiries. “Meanwhile, Father Healy had arranged that all the thinnest people in the island should be at Achill Sound to meet me on my arrival. They were instructed to be lying about in listless attitudes, too utterly weary except to whisper that they were starving. Unfortunately, we were delayed nearly an hour. Meanwhile the thinnest inhabitants had started some burning question; words led to blows, and by the time I arrived a furious faction fight was raging. . . . For half an hour after my arrival the ‘starving islanders’ fought like wild cats, and it was late in the afternoon before the last of the combatants was taken away in a donkey cart. . . . Not a word was ever heard about the famine during Lord Carnarvon’s Vice-royalty.” Sir Henry has a good word for the old Nationalist Party, who, he says, had certainly done well for their country. SOME CHIPS.—Mr Asquith will not write his autobiography. In a speech he said “I have never written a biography myself, and I do not propose to write my autobiography. I shall leave that to the other members of my family.” In his “’Hie Irish Guards in the Great War,” Kipling recalls some of the old fire to service for the narrative of his son’s regiment s doings. The work contains many sparkling things, but one particular story belongs to the First Battalion at Villers Cotteret. A group was working its way through a forest under heavy fire, when some of them stopped to pick blackberries. The air was vibrant with shell and bullets. Men were falling fast. The sergeant checked the foragers, sayihg “I wouldn’t mind them berries, lads. There’s maybe worrums in ’em.”

John Galsworthy, its seems, has confessed to the authorship of “The Burning Spear,” a war satire which was published anonymously in Britain in 1918. Few great personages of the last four hundred years have survived as brilliantly as Catherine de Medici has done, and Professor Van Dyke’s biography of this amazing woman—which Mr Murray is to

publish shortly—is said to give the reader an unbiassed picture, not only of Catherine herself, but of the period in which she governed and flourished.

The leading publishing houses of Scandinavia—Gyldendal, Bonnier, Pio, Aschehoug, Schonberg—have made a reduction in price, in some cases amounting to 60 per cent, of a large number of their best sellers. Lucky Scandinavians. "The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, 19141918,” by Rear-Admiral M. W. W. P. Consett, C.M.G., was published early in May by Williams and Norgate. Admiral Consett was Naval Attache in Scandinavia from 1912 to 1919, and Naval Adviser to the Supreme Council in 1920. The Admiral, writing with the authority of personal knowledge, deals with the economic blockade of Germany, and comes to the conclusion that the blockade could have been made really effective two and a half years sooner that it was, and quotes official statistics in support of his contention. L. CranmerJßyng who has already won a high place among writers with his rendering of “A Lute of Jade” and “A Feast of Lanterns,” now offers a play, “Salma,” a drama of April played in Cintra one thousand years ago. Mr Murray is the publisher.