A Literary Log.

Southland Times, Issue 19172, 16 February 1924, Page 9

A Literary Log.

(BY

"TOTA.”

THE UNFINISHED STORY.— Stephen I McKenna has so often found it impossible ' to get the whole of his story into one book ; that one strongly suspects "The Commandment of Moses ’ of being the first of a 1 group > It certainly requires a sequel because the author leaves us with a conclusion that is merely an introduction to the future. He finished his book, but he certainly did not finish his story. McKenna 1 has taken as his heroine a young girl who during the emotional times of the war threw the conventions to the wind and lived with her lover in spite of the fact that he had a wife alive. Joan Prendergast, who had bobbed hair and spoke in sentences spattered with dots, was in some war job and lived with Curtis Anker, a gallant soldier who was a lady-killer as well as a killer of Germans. Joan was madly in love with him, but one is not so certain that his passion for her would have survived the war. This point is left in doubt because he is kiiled just before the Armistice and just before his wife was ready to take him to the Divorce Court with the beautiful and highly temperamental Joan as the latest co-respondent. His death comes as a ; terriole blow and she almost goes under, ■ but she is saved by the intervention of I Millbank, the best man in the story although • he is handicapped with the name of Bertie. Joan is a typical McKenna heroine, strongly ’ reminiscent in externals of the Lady Lilith of "The Sensationalists,” but she is less selfish and certainly more capable of loyalty. Joan lives at high tension and is a prey to all sorts of tremendous emotional upheavals, but this is the author’s fault , rather than hers, and it is due to his ner- I vous hand which sprinkles those infernal dots over every page. The title of the story is linked with the story by the twenty-fourth verse of Deuteronomy’s twenty-third chapter, "Then yc shall bring them both out into the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die. . . .” The stoning is threatened when Joan falls in love with Jack Keithley, the son of strict parents to whom the con ventions are very serious laws. For many pages she struggles against this new passion because she feels that Keithley would not marry her if he knew of her affairs with Ankers, and tvery picture we have of Jack suggests that this view of him is sound. Finally Joan, who insists that there is nothing in her breach of the conventions of which she should be ashamed, consents to marry Keithley and goes to see his parents in Scotland. There she is confronted by Millbank and by Isabel Mordant, both of whom know the details of her past and both of whom feel bound by dictates of honour and duty (in Isabel’s case there is Mso a suggestion of jealousy) to reveal the fact to Keithley. After some lengthy discussions, both fail to cast the stones Fate has put in their hands, Millbank because he has some sense of decency and has the advice of a wise old man who came a terrible cropper years before in acting as the informant in similar circumstances and Isabel because the virtuous Jack redSes her to silence by a boisterous refusal to listen. Both have arranged that Joan shall tell. She runs away and is brought back by the passionate Keithley. Everybody knows that there has been something in her past which, if Keithley had known of it would have prevented him from asking her to marry him. She writes her brief confession on a slip of paper and "hands it to him to read in front of the family. Does he read it? That would be ghastly bad form. He burns the paper unopened and everybody goes to tea. But behind all this is the outrageous and outraged widow of Ankers, a woman capable of everything and fully armed with stones. Hie rebuffed Isabel, who marries some fellow when she was rudely dismissed by Jack, has a hold over Beatrice but we have nothing to justify the belief that she can keep the nasty Beatrice silent. McKenna leaves one looking to the future with apprehension. The stones have not been cast but they are still available. Joan at heart is a likeable girl, but she is hectic and the storms that shake her are made to appear like tempests in a claret cup so surely does McKenna cloth her with artificialities. These pictures may be true of a section of London Society, but none the less they apear unreal and little. Read this high-strung affair and then take up Sheila Kaye-Smith and you will realise the disparity in size—in spite of McKenna’s brilliance. In the story outside of Millbank, and Joan, none of the characters is enjoyable. Ankers, who is seen through the eyes of others is an uncertain quantity though generally he was a cad; Jack calls the heroine Joanie, for which he and McKenna should be spanked and Beatrice is so insufferably naety that the author’s easy disposal of her is unacceptable. “The Commandment of Moses,” which has gone into many editions already, will undoubtedly be read with avidity and the craft of the author will make the reading of it an exciting process —I went right through its pages eagerly—and so perhaps McKenna really has scored again. The novel is published by Hutchinson, my copy coming from McNaughton’s. THE PEACEFUL ESSAYIST— To many people the merest mention of an essay is to suggest hours of tedium, and their fears keep them from looking between the covers of any book that is not fiction. It is true that Dr Frank Crane and Richard King have broken down many barriers and speak to audiences which only a few years ago would have shunned the essay as being no more interesting than a treatise on Milton. The Crane and King essays are really expanded platitudes and they aim at doing j nothing more serious than feed to the popular palate the fare with which it is already familiar, but if one or two people are lead from Crane to Lucas and from Lucas to the heavier meta! among the essayists, these platitudinarians have done good work. Fewpeople can stand being flung headlong into the great breakers of literature; they must learn to swim in the calmer and shallower waters. But an introduction to the essay can be obtained with as much enjoyment as through Crane, and with more profit if the quietly graceful pages of the Rev. F. W. i Boreham are consulted. Mr Boreham came to New Zealand in 1895, and he settled in | Mosgiel for over ten years, his manse there having a welcome ifireside, and his church a pulpit from which his simple eloquence moved a loyal and enthusiastic congregation. Then he moved to Tasmania, where much of his published writings were conceived and executed. Mr Boreham has no flambouyancies to secure him an interested audience. He shuns sensationalism, but he never falls into the easy swing of convivialities. There is a deep religious note struck in his ejays, but the language he uses reveals a man of strength, a man who knows his world and who can appreciate the value of laughter. He has a sly humour which is betrayed by twinkfipg witticisms which occur every little while, and by their easy •nirauet convince the reader that they rise

I spontaneously. In “Faces in the Fire.’’ .Mr | Boreham is in reflective mood, and at times ihe is fanciful to fine purpose. These essays ' are sedatives. They will not excite one, I but by their calm beauty they bring a restful content, a satisfaction and sympathy which are worth the having. Mr Boreham was an extensive reader—he read wisely and he remembered the good things that came i across his path. His style makes reading | easy and his subject matter is always well chosen. “Faces in the Fire” is an excellent collection of essays, and to those who have read Crane nad King I should certainly say: Do not neglect Boreham. My copy of "Faces in the Fire” comes from Hyndman's.

ROMANCE IN SUSSEX. - To-day in English fiction there is no writer, male or female, who strikes a truer note than Sheila Kaye-Smith. This young woman has ten or eleven novels to her credit and her work has for long passed into a sound maturity which enables her to be placed securely among the soundest of the modern writers. She has done for Sussex w’hat Thomas Hardy did for Wessex, but while Hardy is now done with the production of novels, she continues to give the world new pictures of the country she knows and loves so well as the background for wellknit romances. Sheila Kaye-Smith combines with great effect a romantic narrative with a realistic medium, and with unrelenting frankness she clothes her situations and her people with reality. The cities arc not for her. In these novels she keeps us in the country and even when she brings us in contact with the brutal facts of country life she does not forget the beauty of the scene. Rural romance cannot be presented in fine linen and with the graces of gentility unless there is a frank discarding of naturalism. Life in the country, where it touches the soil, is more brutal in its cruelty than it is in the cities where educaton breeds etiquette and form, but humanity in its fundamentals is much the same. Passion moves with rough simplicity, and its action is direct, where among the more cultured folk it has to proceed by tortuous paths through entanglements of artificial customs. Sheila Kaye-Smith could not succeed if she were to tie her hands with the wordy warfare of modern city society, and she is wise to remain in the field so peculiarly her own. The comparison with Hardy is inevitable, but there is no suggestion of imitation, though doubtless the Wessex novelist has influe ced her not a little. The comparison is inspired by her distinctive alliance with a country, her faithfulness in depicting life and the simple grandeur of her method. Her characteristics are displayed in “Spell Land,” one of her earlier novels, which is one of a cheap edition of her works now being published by Cassell. “Spell Land” is the name of a Sussex farm, and about it is written the tragedy of a woman who married unwisely and then, endeavouring to escape the consequences, matfs with her first lover, a fanner, whose mode of living is then too crude for her cultured mind. The story is based on the Swenboygian utterance

“It is not known that to love one’s own —that is, oneself in another—divides,” and in working out her theme the author puts us in contact with three characters drawn with powerful lines—Claude Shepherd, Oliver Mills, and Emily Branwell. We meet them first as children, and through ; some exquisite scenes we come to under- i stand the waywardness of Oliver, the staunch honesty of Emily and the rude strength of Claude. Claude loves Emily, but he loses touch with her and in the city the more refined Oliver wins her. The marriage is a failure because Oliver’s love is unstable and she returns to Sussex there to mate with Claude, but her simple honesty wrecks their chance of happiness at the outset and tragedy stalks in with heavy tread. Emily is a tragic figure and the failure of her life seems inevitable from the outset. The end comes with stark brutality, but the scenes are painted with rare sympathy, with an emotional appeal which gains enormously because the author never relaxes her restraint. “Spell Land,” is typical of Sheila Kaye-Smith’s method, though it is by no means her best work—that you must find out for yourself because I have no doubt that preferences amongst her readers will differ. My copy comes from Hyndman’s. SPORT IN NEW ZEALAND.—From the Government Publicity Bureau has come a folder on “Sport in New Zealand,” dealing with the attractions offered by the Dominion to sportsmen. It is noticeable that the bureau still ignores the fact that the Atlantic salmon is confined to one river system, but Southlanders should not mind, seeing that we are assured that there are “considerable herds of moose” in the fiord country. in support of which an unconvincing photograph of a bull moose is reproduced. MID-PACIFIC MAGAZINE—A copy of the Mid-Pacific Magazine, published in the interests of the Pan-Pacific Union has arrived. This well-produced magazine is of particular interest because it contains an article on the Philippines by Mr W. Quinn, whose ‘writings on the East have been so popular locally. There is also an article on Education in New Zealand by Mr Frank Milner, the Rectpr of the Waitaki Boys' High School. The magazine, which is illustrated with magnificent photographic reproductions, is decidedly inviting. NATURAL HISTORY.— It is good to see the Australian Museum Magazine proceeding vigourously in its second volume. This quarterly is published under the auspices of the Australian Museum in Sydney, and under the editorship of the Museum Director, Dr Charles Anderson. Generously illustrated with excellent plates the magazine makes an appeal to the popular mind but it is never trivial, and dealing with Australian history it is of particular interest to New Zealanders. The January issue, which I have received through 1 McNaughton’s, contains an informative ! article on the Australian Pearl Fisheries, i dealing not only with the gathering of the I pearl shell, but also explaining the comi mercial use to which it is put. The Belubula Caves in New South Wales are ; not well known, but an article on them ’ reveals them as rivals to the more widely ; known Jenolan limestone formations. The ; Stick-nest Building Rat is treated at length ' and there is an excellent article on CraoHunting on the North Coast. The Museum 1 Magazine should not be overlooked by j anyone interested in natural history. * SPLINTERS.— “Riceyman Steps,” Arnold T mnett’s new novel, is to be dramatised by the author. , Mr Bernard Darwin, the well-known writer about golf, is the grandson of the great scientist*

From the Morning Post: The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould wrote “Onward Christian Soldiers” nearly sixty years ago for a Sundayschool festival at Horbury, the Yorkshire parish, of which he was then curate. The bishop of the diocese raised objections to the lines “With the Cross of Jesus Going on before” as savouring of Ritualism. Whereupon the author suggested that it should read, “With the Cross of Jesus Left behind the door.” That only made the bishop still more vexed.

Putnams are to publish early this year a third collection of sketches and verse by Mr F. W. Thomas and Mr David Low, of the London Star.

Apropos of Mr Winston Churchill’s statement that his war book has brought him £15,000, it is calculated that Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” is the record literary money-maker. It brought its author nearly a quarter of a million pounds. I Jam O’Flaherty, the author of that successful first novel, “Thy Neighbour’s Wife,” has had a romantic career. He was born on one of the wild and lonely Aran Isles, off the coast of Galway. After the war, in which he served with the Irish Guards, the author signed on as a trimmer aboard a tramp steamer bound for Brazil, and for some time he tramped and worked all over the United States