A Literary Log.

Southland Times, Issue 19546, 9 May 1925, Page 13

A Literary Log.

(By

“Iota”).

the roll of the TUMBRILS.—If the French Revolution of ’94 did nothing else, it has provided an immortal background for histories and romances. Charles Dickens scaled the summit in his “Tale oi Two Cities,” and Dumas in 4he “Taking of the Bastille.” and, of course, more recently, and thus with fresher and nearer success. Baroness Orcxy gave us her “Scarlet Pimpernel,” to whom she has dedicated the larger portion cf her work, which, even for the interest it creates in ite readers, must be placed amongst the important sections of English fiction. Swarming with spies and bloodshed, and the mere plaything of ambitious bourgeois, the unfortunate France, cowering under Madame la Guillotine, lent herself admirably to the plots and intrigues born of the imaginative brain of the novelist. Many present day novelists have written round this lamentable period with more or less success, but when I received Valentine William’s new story I was agreeably intrigued after his “Three of Clubs of last year. Mr Williams is a master of the art of dealing with spies, and to his work “thrilling” is best ascribed, utterly relieved of the cheap sensationalism which is generally coupled with this word. The Red Mass” opens in St. James’s Street, London, on the arrogant face of Hector Fotheringay, Lieutenant and Captain of his Majesty's Thirtieth Foot-guards, nonchalant man-about-town and leader of the elabcrate fashions of the times. With a Brigade of Guards fighting under the Duke of \ork in Flanders, Fotheringay was detained in town, not unwillingly, by the whim of his bewitching cousin, the Lady Betty Marchmont, before whom be was laying his ardent suit{ But even in this carefree w’orld cf .fashion an echo of the clamorous upheavals across the Channel is introduced by Fotheringaw’s man O’Dare, a sullen Irishman whose bitterness aeainst the haughty insolence of his master’s treatment breaks out in very revolution ary mutterings to the horrified ear of the landlord, who, being typically English, is typically subservient and deferential. In a coffee-house with his friend Lord Maxeter. and a mysterious Mr Gray, Fotheringay overhears three Frenchmen at a neighbouring table slighting the Duke of York and the English Government, and hotheadedly orders them out of the room. A duel is arranged for the following morning, and he continues on his way to the Lady Betty, to whom he has decided to propose, partly for his deep affection for her, and partly, it must be admitted, to free him from the serious debts which were embarrassing him owing to his fondness for the g-nm ing-table and his inability to control his considerable fortune until he married. Betty rebuffs him scornfully, calling him a coward to be idling in town merely for the whim of a girl, when his fellows were shedding blood in Flanders. Furious-st this injustice, he later becomes gloriously drunk, but at the light mention of Betty’s name in a gambling den he dashes the contents of his glass in the offender’s face, and out of the ensuing silence a drunken voice says clearly: “Gad! He’s soused the Prince!” Utterly disgraced, his sword taken from him, and with Betty’s curt note of dismissal, he is visited by the enigmatical Mr"-Gray, who leads him to Mr William Pitt. First Minister of England. With the promise of free pardon and an adjustment of his affairs on his return, he is entrusted with papers of the most serious nature for their chief representative in Paris, a Mr Engstrom; and, Pitt brooking no delay on his mission, he is obliged to depart without keeping his meeting of the following morning. Henceforward the book moves rapidly, and with the discovery that Engstrom had been another victim of the guillotine, his troubles thicken. In addition, he is indebted for his life to a little seamstress, Loison, who had been in the habit of helping Engstrom, and a friendship, made more accute by their continual danger, springs up between them. Loison was the first to be sent to the Bastille, and the agony which Fotheringay experiences makes him realise his love for this little “cidevant,” victim of the gory Terror. As a last resource he appealed to Louxou, who before befriended him, loving him passionately, to plead for her and obtain her release. Meanwhile he himself is -taken, and when at last rescued by O’Farrell, one of the leaders of the English Secret Service in France, all desire to live has left him owing to his conviction of Loison’s death. The last scene is laid in Somerset, with Sir Hector. Fotheringay. squire of Cr an well, living in sorrow, alone. To the Lady Betty’s remorse and half-veiled offers of retribution he cannot respond, but as she leaves another lady is announced, and Louzou enters. On finding that Hector is unaware of her successful ‘"bargain.” by which Loisop was freed, she breaks the news to him gently before she finally allows him to see her. The story ends where it began, but with the complete revolution of a man’s life in between. And the change from the haughty young blood of fashion to a thoughtful, experienced man, and married, is wonderfully finely done. Hector Fotheringay is a clean, honourable, reasonable Englishman, and not for one moment does he fall in the reader’s estimation. The brief glimpse given of Pitt is very sympathetic, and that Williams is an admirer of this Minister he leaves us no doubt. Undoubtedly the best characterisation in the book is that of Louzou, woman of the demi-monde, voluptuous and alluring, placing love on the pedestal before which all else must fall, yet for the man whose love she vainly coveted, striking with one of the tyrants of the Terror the only “bargain” considerable in the circumstances, so that Loison might be spared. Here is a noble woman, with all the weaknesses and faults of a perverted life-time, very nicely portrayed, and it is because of this that I look forward to what Valentine Williams will do in the future. A book which will have a large reading public, and will find the author many new readers, I warrant. “The Red Mass” is published by Hodder and Stoughton whence came my copy. tmf vinnomic amua n *

THE VIGOROUS ANNA.—If Anna Lad not been such a vigorous, such a vivid personality the story written round her public - house would have inclined to dullness in spite of the incident packed into the action, and in spite of romance which is carried on at a great pace by a violent wooer to the distraction of the nervous maid, who is necessary to this portion of the yarn but by no means interesting in herself. “Anna’s” has been set on the coast of Devon, by C. Nina Boyle and there is a ring of truth in the characterisation all the way through, to say nothing of the clever use of the legacy of smuggling and other shady practices left to the old inn by the past. Anna’s public-

house is the resort of honest sailoring men and of people who are interested in the building and its history for a variety of reasons. The latter are not so helpful to the revenues of the place, but they are useful in the story. Anna’s bluff exterior hides a shrewd and unscrupulous woman who is the possessor of a number of shady secrets affecting the men of the house of Le Telleur, against whom Anna cheerfully operates to her own satisfaction. An interesting figure in the story is a drunken goat, quite a sinister but at the same time a curious influence on the proceedings. The affairs of the house of Le Telleur were exciting and full of bright colouring. Murder, kidnapping various types of fraud and substitution have their share in the business as well as a suicide and a bigamous marriage. Anna has her hands full in dealing with these affairs, but she is a eapable woman, evidently versed in the art of hushing things up. In the face of awe-inspiring 6dds she fixes everything up. The hero, of course, gets the right girl and this he owes to Anna rather than to his own efforts, for he is far too violent a chap to have won the maid unaided, and but for Anna he would probably have frightened her to death. “Anna’s” is a lively story, well handled, but hardly equal to the work Miss Boyle has already done for us, though in saying that one is placing “Anna’s” well above the majority of present-day fiction. “Anna s ’ is published by Allan and Unwin.

DEEP-SEA FISHING.—When the German submarines were staking liners in the Atlantic few people thought for a moment of the possible effects these achievements would have on the fiction of the future. Perhaps if the Germans had been conscious of what they were doing they would have been inclined to spare some of the vessels which now lie at the bottom of the sea. The treasure-seekers of fiction, to say nothing of the prototypes in actual life, for years have been diving for Spanish galleons and pieces of eight, but nowadays we have a whole crop of adventurers who fit out expeditions for the recovery of gold from submarined liners. This was the stunt which attracted Jack Anderson and when he won £130,000 in a Derby sweep he set out for the Irish coast off which lay a sunken liner with vast quantities of bullion aboard, one of the w’ar casualties. Jack was a keen hunter of treasure, but at times a bit careless. He runs off with another’s man’s wife (quite innocently) and so adds materially to the difficulties which beset him. There could be no romance about plain diving for bullion, but one would think that any hero would be quite satisfied with a covey of octopuses as his chief enemies without adding a nasty and rather angry husband to his troubles. The husband works vigorously to bring the hero’s efforts to nought, but neither he nor the octopuses can prevent Anderson from “bringing home the bacon” or in other words recovering the treasure which seems to be worth a couple of millions. Anderson has an exciting fight with an octopus some three hundred feet below the sea-level but everything works out satisfactorily and in addition to getting the money Anderson wins the girl, while the villain or husband is punished, thcugh less severely than justice really demands. This yarn “Two Million: A Romance of Deep-Sea Diving” is by Harry B. Vogel, who evidently knows more than most writers of fiction about deep-sea work. It is quite an exciting yarn in spite of the strain it puts on one’s credulity. “Two Million” is published by T. Fisher Unwin.

VALUES.—We are reminded, then, that literature is never quite the whole man. Some things even in Sophocles and Shakespeare have never got to us. But it is not the whole man that we need be seeking in his book: we may seek a particular vision, a particular voice. We need not appraise the values of his total character; we may appraise the value or values of his book and that, too, less in an absolute sense, than in relation to function for us. When a work of literature has centrality in either sense—though the latter (range of experience) how often conditions the former (personal adjustments)—it may be said to yield values, rather than one single value. "We may be seeking a voice, I said, and not appraising a man. Hence we may hear gladly and with profit of but one value at a time, and need not cast the report aside because it is on that value and not on many another too—because forsooth it has less of centrality than of intensity. The very intensity, the concentration, the illumination, the over-emphasis, if you please, may be its pre-eminent justification. Looked at in the large, there is the intensity of the one value, if you the Book of young Shelley, the Dreamer, there are the many wise, calm values of the Book of old Goethe, the Sage, who outlived him, like Nestor, by generations*of men. That Goethe gives me more values than Shelley, destroys nothing of the voice, the value, which is Shelley. For the value which is Shelley is a value that is not Goethe, and is an authentic voice of one phase of the history of the soul These values, these realisations of experience, that have come to us from age to age—that still come and will come hereafter—are what we must mean by the messages of literature and of all art. —William Ellery Leonard, in University of Wisconsin Studies. I The autobiography of the late Samuel Gompere is to be published shortly in America under the title “Seventy Years of Life and Labour.” J Vivian Burnett, the son of Frances Hodgson Burnett, said to have been the model of “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” is now gathering material for a biography of his mother. ’ Mr. Asquith is now engaged on a book of an historical character,, but precisely what form it is to take is still a mystery. Very likely it will prove to be a retrospect of Parliamentary fife during the past fifty I years. 1 Stella Benson, who is living in China, is | returning to England in June. Her latest, i work is “The Little World,” a series of travel sketches, in Macmillan’s latest lists. Floyd Dell’s latest novel, “This Mad Ideal” has been published by A. A. Knopf of New York. Dell was the author of “Moon Calf.” ' Deep Sea Chanties (Heinemann), is edited by Frank Shay, and contains a preface by William McFee. It is filled with woodcuts, many in colour, by Edward A. Wilson. It contains a hundred and fifty of the traditional sea chanties, authenticated by the old sailors. These chanties are being fast forgotten, and the collection has a peculiar interest for sea-lovers, quite apart from the charm and freshness of ,he make-up of the book itself. Hugh Walpole is writing a book on Anthony Trollope, one of the favourite authors, and a writer who has influenced him a great deaL

“Missed it ?” he said in a solemn disgust. “I went to Randwick in Sydney—a fine big course with great stands and a hugq crowd, but the members -were in an enclosure of their own and they stayed there —they would rub against me. At the end of the day I stopped to buy a frankfurt for memory’s sake and when I had finished it the course was empty. Sixty thousand people had vanished in less- than half an hour. Why, Epsom is still alive at one o’clock in the morning—the people are friendly and out for a holiday. At Rancjwick there were 60,000 people trying to pick winners—that’s all—and when the last.race was run they rushed away. Our lack of restraint lets us enjoy ourselves; yours makes racing a cold, hard business. And in your theatres and restaurants! If I want to have a smoke, can I have it? No. There is some rule or law which says I mustn’t smoke. In the London theatres you can smoke if you want to and no one thinks any the worse of you. In this country if the rich man wants to drink after six o’clock he can go to his club, but the working man has to cut it out. But in England the rich man may have his clubs, but the working man can go to hotels and, if. he is an exservice man to soldiers’ clubs and get what he wants at all hours. That is an equality which you have forgotten in this and other countries. The liberty of the individual is a big thing in England and the aristocrats see that the poor man is not shut out of these things. They are the finest in the world and it’ll be a sad day when they go. You can’t beat blood in human beings or in racehorses. You can speak more freely in the Old Land than you can in the colonies and the Englishman’s mind is freer. Here you have restraints on you at every town.”

“I am glad you do not confine your complaints to the mere material things,” I said coldly. “There you are!” he said with a fine combination of oaths. “There you are getting shirty because you are hearing the truth what ain’t nice. You produce great footballers, great mutton and all that, but you are tied down by all sorts of conventions and rules and regulations. The Government does everything for you and you have to have a whole lot of laws and rules to let the Government do it. You’re not free while you’ve got all that and yet you prate about being freer than we are. You sympathise with us because we stick to tradition and move slowly. Why, the people who run down the Old Country are the shrewdest on the face of the globe—they may seem silly, but that’s their way—they keep their hands on affairs and they come out right. The dole? Why was that continued? To bankrupt the unions through their contributions and when they’re broke there will be tons of work and no industrial disturbances. Lloyd George did that, and it was a shrewd move. When you get out of the Old Country you realise how great she is and as soon as I get back I’m going to stand up in the open and tell ’em that they don’t know how little real freedom there is in the colonies. Real freedom is to do, say and think what you like, and in New Zealand you can’t do nearly as much as one can in any one of the three. Class distinctions you’ve got and a lot of silly notions, but you’re slaves to laws and what other people will say. You’re a fine lot of fellows in many ways, but, lord, you are behind in the race and I’ll bet your education system, for all your independence and free places is cluttered up with all sorts of rules and things of the sort. If I want to smoke or have a drink in London I can have both—but not here. You’re just kidding yourself you’re free.” And as he spat contemptuously into the fire (it wasn’t my fire) I found myself thinking that, while he was probably exaggerating, probably forgetting the existence of many restraints in England which are as irksome as those which we know, there was a great deal of truth running through his charge. We often lose sight, of the fact that the maintenance of traditions is often bound up in the preservation of personal liberty, and that the aristocrat of the Old Country worries less about class distinctions and, therefore, rubs shoulders in the crowd with greater confidence than do we; but, of course, freedom is a comparative thing and its existence or absence depends entirely on one’s taste and desires. All the same, here was a rough man of slender means, a worker, and he could see the hollowness of some of our boasts, but I take some pride in the fact that he was free to say what he would. Unfortunately, however, our host was an Englishman recently arrived.