A Literary Log.

Southland Times, Issue 19294, 12 July 1924, Page 9

A Literary Log.

(BY

“lOTA.*

ANOTHER SAGA.—Gilbert Cannan dating back to 1909 may be placed in position as one of the products of the influences which made Wells. He belongs to the undramatic school, and he is a sociologistic critic, if one may be permitted the license of such a phrase. Behind his serious fiction is the desire to make things hot for the imperfect people who make our world imperfect, an apparent wish to assault the faults with his pen and thereby to change the face of things. “Old Mole,” written in 1914. began with the delightful situation of an old schoolmaster suddenly flung from his rostrum into a travelling theatrical company, but the author could not keep his hands off the tempting chance to preach against England’s false standards md so the schoolmaster and the excellent xjsture into which he had thrown the tory went down under a mass of cynical and pungent punishments which spoilt the whole work. Cannan has not entirely overcome this missionary fervour, but he has learned to control it and to keep in mind the fact that too much propaganda is an evil thing. There is more subtlety in his method, and as this cleverness is augmented by a smooth wit, his works are astonishingly diverting, in spite of the Cannan method of sifting every bit of evidence within reach. He is an ardent member of the Saga Society. William De Morgan used to write long novels and on one occasion he required two volumes for one work, but since his day series fiction has become popular and as it makes possible a closer study of the characters and their times, the modern materialistic writer has seized this opportunity with avidity. Romain Rolland and Proust did this for the French, and in English we have among the younger men as striking exponents of the Saga Style. Stephen McKenna, Compton Mackenzie and Cannan. These men do not always write sequels to their opening works, but they present a series of novels as parts of one great work, the whole of which must be examined before judgment is passed or complete understanding is possible. McKenna approached his story from various angles, but Mackenzie and Cannan stick to the two main characters and follow them from the upwelling of life to the catastrophy of the end—when 'hey have met Death or expended their interest. This method can be handled successfully only if the author can present his sociologistic studies with sprightly language. Cannan enjoys this advantage—topped by a pungent wit, which at times suggests the influence of Samuel Butler. Cannan wrote the Lawrie Saga as a study—of pre-war days and the people that long peace brought into being. That age has ended, and the “new times’ ’are with us. The war wrought revolutions, and in the latest Cannan series the struggles of humanity for higher things against the imperfections of the period are set in these new conditions. The series opened with “Pugs and Peacocks,” and “Sembal” and carries on to 'The House of Prophecy” which has just reached me. The two earlier works must be read if the reader is to grasp the full meaning of ‘The House of Prophecy,” and I think the fourth novel “The Soaring Bird,” will be necessary 7 to complete one’s understanding. Do not take it that this means “The House of Prophecy” is Greek unless you have read its predecessors. Its story 7 is fairly comprehensible and interesting, but the characters of Melian Stokes. Matty Boscowen and Sembal, the Jew, fall short of complete realism if their earlier appearances are ignored. This story opens with Melian Stokes’s reappearance after his sentence in gaol as a conscientious objector. He is a brilliant fellow and an idealist, butting up against the prisoning walls of the social structure—a typical Cannan posture. Stokes returns to Matty Boscowen —this is about 1918 —and they decided to marry—for “the good of the community.” Again we meet Sembal, the Jew, whom Cannan use*, it seems, to make clear that the future of the world is largely dependent on their wonderful capacity, and also we have again Penrose Kennedy who becomes secretary to Stokes, the latter succeeding to the title of Lord Rusholme. These three men love Matty who does not seem to be able to make up her mind. She agrees to marry Stokes and then jilts him, refuses Kennedy with whom she seems to be in love and then appears to be ready to live with Sembal who is presented as the man who understands. That is the main thread of this complex story in which Cannan flings away at modern conditions while hinting broadly that women’s leadership and Jewish intelligence are our only hopes. All the main characters are modern and difficult, but they are very 7 real and absorbingly interesting. Mrs Nathan, the rich woman who has adopted Sembal as her protege is well drawn and so is Lady Rusholme, a survival of the previous age, while Uncle Bill Boscowen, the dealer of reptiles, is refreshingly blunt and shrewd —and never more so than when he tells Stokes that people are really oetter than he gives them credit for being. Matty is intriguing but puzzling all through —the new woman who seems ever eager to go somewhere without knowing what direction she is to take or what she will find at the close. Matty is a study in restlessness and uncertainty. Stokes is the embittered and impatient idealist who really fails to understand the world—Kennedy is less difficult, and Sembal is the offensive but conquering Jew. The story moves with vigour and is less talkative than the earlier Cannan works, and there are flashes of excellent humour. “The House of Prophecy” is published by Thornton Butterworth, whence ■jomes my copy. ART ENDURES.—In the department of esthetics, wherein critics mainly disport themselves, it is almost impossible to think of a so-called truth that shows any sign of being permanently true. . . . But the work of art, as opposed to the theory behind it, has a longer life, particularly if that theory be obscure and questionable, and so cannot be determined accurately. Hamlet, the Mona Lisa, Faust, Dixie, Parsifal, Mother Goose, Annabel Lee, Huckleberry Fin—these things, so baffling to pedagory7, so contumacious to the categories, so mysterious in purpose and utility—these things live. And why? Because there is in them the flavour of salient, novel and attractive personality . . . because they pulse and breathe and speak, because they are genuine- works of art. —H. L. Menekcn, in “Prejudices, Third Series.” THE LADIES OF RUMANIA.—E. O. Hoppe, the well-known photographer, can visit Rumania again with confidence after his refercr.ee to th? ladies in his recentlypublished book on his Rumanian travels, “In Gipsy Camp and Royal Palace.” He say’s: "No visitdr to ary public place in Fu Y; r can remain u’uKned by the beauty oi the women uicxe. For one thing,

they have the prettiest feet in the world. ... I have never seen such figures and such flesh tints anywhere, and their hands simply asked to be painted. ... I must not forget to commend their wonderful eyes, large, lustrous, appealing, capable of expressing every shade of emotion.” MEN. MINES AND MARRIAGE.— Gertrude Atherton is one of the intellectual novelists of the day 7. She is an American and has been writing since the early years of this century, which means that she has a grip of her craft, can pack a good story within the limits of the normalities of form and can approach the job of character exposition without having to throw all drama overboard. The low-pressure novel with much talk on character analysis and sociological themes is not for her, but it can never be said that any Atherton work depends for its substance on superficial things. Everything she has written is alive and reveals an intellectual mind’s application to real things in life. She is unquestionably one of the world’s important writers of fiction and anyone seeking the title as the best woman fiction writer must first dispose of Mrs Atherton’s claim backed by an array 7 of novels which impress one by the unfaltering soundness of her work and the high standard she has maintained over a lengthy span of years. “Perch of the Devil” will not be remembered by many people in this part of the world, chiefly because it came out first in the year of the Great War’s opening and therefore was lost to us in the flood of exciting literature which burst from many pens faced with the task of interpreting the nation’s war effort. It is a study of American life with the domestic affairs of a mining engineer to supply the drama and the Perch mine to fix the location in Montana. Gregory Compton and his wife Ida are the prmcipal characters in this admirably presented triangle, and they pass through the vicissitudes of domestic misunderstandings, always avoiding, however, real disaster, and the story ends on a cheerful note. Ida is a capable woman, an intelligent woman w 7 ho sees the feminine movement and realises that complete emancipation is not yet arrived, in spite of the legal gains. She sums up the position towards the close when she has disposed of Ora, who was a rival for Gregory’s affections. Ida has had her admirers and her own doubts, but she solves them and taking charge carries events through with the idea of securing happiness for herself and her man. Oh, the extraordinary woman hasn’t been born yet, in spite of the big fight the sex is putting up. She Says to Gregory: When women really 7 are extraordinary they will be just as happy without men and they now want to be with them. They try with all their might to be hard, and they can ring outside like metal, but inside they are just one perpetual shriek for the right man to come along—that is all but a few hundred thousand tribadists. But they’ve made a beginning, and one day they’ll really be able to take men as incidentally as men take women. Then we'll all be happy. Don’t you fool yourself that that’s what I’m aiming at, though. I’m the sort that hangs on to her man like grim death. Ida is the understanding woman who can make a success of marriage, and she is well worth meeting. “Perch of the Devil” now comes out in fourth edition, this time as one of the John Murray’s Fiction Library 7. My copy comes from the publisher. AUSTRALIAN CRIME.— The study of major crimes does not necessarily betoken a morbid state of mind; rather a desire to see humanity reacting to great crises When a man reaches the point where he is prepared to defy the State’s threat of capital punishment and to take life, he must have passed through a period of tremendous stress, whether long or extremely brief matters not. No situation devised by the novelist can out-run in dramatic strength the full story of a crime in w'hich passions run at white heat. The author of “Studies in Australian Crime,” Mr John D. Fitzgerald, formerly Minister of Justice in New 7 South Wales, deals with this aspect of the subject in a brief but telling preface wherein he defends the study of crime and criminals as an activity productive of beneficial results. He quotes Edmund Burke in his support: "Real culprits, as original characters, stand forward on the canvas of

humanity as prominent objects for our special study,” and then proceeds to say: Murder is a revolt against the constructive social order; a reversion to the cave and the jungle man; it is individualism in excelsis. The strange beings who are the subjects of these chapters are worthy of study by those whose business it is to govern men. But no apology is needed for putting forward this book. The illustrous example of Dumas is a justification; and the - reader may 7 conclude, after perusual of these pages, that Australian crimes constitute a series of examples which the criminologist cannot ignore. These studies cover two volumes, and they deal with fourteen major criminals, dating from the crime of Henry Louis Bertrand in 1865, to w 7 hat are knowm as the I.W.W. crimes of 1916. Included in the collection is the Deeming case and the Gat-ton tragedy which remains to this day unsolved. Mr Fitzgerald has done his work well, presenting the facts of the cases with commendable lucidity, though in excellent taste. These two volumes may be taken as companions to Boxall’s well-known “History” of the Australian Bushrangers,” because together they cover an important section of Australian history. “Studies In Australian Crime” have been included in the Platypus Series published by the Cornstalk Publishing Co., my copy coming from Angus and Robertson, of Sydney. THE ROLL OF HONOUR.—The Government has published New Zealand’s Roll of Honour in connection with the Great War. This work consists of a complete record of the men and women who lost their lives with the New Zealand forces during the war, in the Dominion and beyond its shores. Compiled from official records the Roil of Honour will be accepted as authoritative. It is a record of the price the Dominion paid in supporting the Allied cause and in.making good our claim to be considered as a country that has attained full manhood. CHARACTER IN FICTION.—The Georgians had, therefore, a difficult task before them, and if they have failed, as Mr Bennett asserts, there is nothing to surprise us in that. To bring back character from the shapelessness into which it has lapsed, to sharpen its edges, deepen its compass, and to make possible those conflicts between human beings which alone rouse our strongernntinna —their prnhtem. ILj

was the consciousness of this problem, and not the accession of King George, which produced, at is always produces, the break between one generation and the next. . . . There is nothing that interests us more than character, that leads to such incessant and laborious speculations about the values, the reasons, and the meaning of existence itself. To disagree about character is to differ in the depths of the being. It is to take different sides, to drift apart, to accept a purely formal intercourse. . . But the novelist has to go much further and to be much more uncompromising than the friend. When he finds himself hopelessly at variance with Mr Wells, Mr Galsworthy, and Mr Bennett about the character—shall we say?— of Mrs Brown, it is useless to defer to their superior genius. It is useless to mumble the polite agreements of the drawing room. He must set about to remake the woman after his own idea. And that, in the circumstances, is a very perilous pursuit. For what, after all, is character—the way that Mrs Brown, for instance, reacts to her surroundings—when we cease to believe what we are told about her, and begin to search out her meaning for ourselves? In the first place, her solidity disappears; her features crumble, the house in which she has lived so long—and a very substantial house it was—topples to the ground. She becomes a will-o’-the-wisp, a dancing light, an illumination gliding up the wall and out of the window, lighting now a freakish malice upon the nose of an archbishop, now in sudden splendour upon the mahogany of the wardrobe. The most solemn sights she turns to ridicule; the most ordinary she invests with beauty. She changes the shape, shifts the accent, of every scene in which she plays her part. And it is from the ruins and splinters of this tumbled mansion that the Georgian writer must somehow reconstruct a habitable dwelling-place, solid, living, flesh-and-blood Mrs Brown. Sadly he must allow that the lady still escapes him. Dismally he must admit bruises received in the pursuit. But it is because the Georgians, poets and novelists, biographers and dramatists, are so hotly engaged each in the pursuit of his own Mrs Brown that theirs is at once the least successful, and the most interesting, hundred years. Moreover, let us prophesy; Mrs Brown will not always escape. One of these days Mrs Brown will be caught. The capture of Mrs Brown is the title of the next chapter in the history of literature; and, let us prophesy again; that chapter will be one of the most important, the most illustrious, the most epoch-making of them all.— Virginia Woolf, in “The Nation and the Athenaeum.” SPLINTERS.—A. S. M. Hutchinson, the author of “If Winter Comes” recently left England for Manaos, the Brazilian city a thousand miles up the River Amazon. The four volumes that Messrs Constable have added to the house’s “Standard” edition of Herman Melville include that author’s mjpuhliahed novel “Billy Budd. ’