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Southland Times, Issue 20002, 16 October 1926, Page 13 (Supplement)

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THE MAXWELL NOVELS—Thornton Butterworth w to be congratulated on the decision to bring out a uniform edition of W.B. Maxwell’s novels if only because it gives one an opportunity of reading again his delightful “Spinster of this Parish” which came out first in 1922 and has gone through twelve printings since. If you have ignored Maxwell’s novels up k* date- you have made a grievous mistake, because he is unquestionably one of the greatest of the British novelists of this time. There are one or two more brilliant fellows, who capture the advanced critics, and some who attain greater notoriety by their daring or their glib surrender to the dictates of the modem crowd, but Maxwell is sound, he is a craftsman, an earnest romanticist who writes in terms of realism, developing his characters instead of expounding them and invariably giving us a novel bearing the imprint of a man who scorns to give the world anything, but a finished article. Ulis is one of the explanatory of the uniformly high standard of his novels. It is possible that other writers have produced individual novels more striking than any of the ten written by Maxwell, but no living writer can point to a collection of such a high general excellence as that wh ch includes “Mrs Thompson." “The Guarded Flame,” “The Mirror and the Lamp,” “Vivien” and “Spinster of this Parish.’ The last of this list which I have just is a reminder that the lives of the Victorians were not necessarily dull in comparison with the excited venturings of the people of this more showy age. A young woman goes to Emmeline Constance Verinder, a middle-aged spinster, for advice, hoping to be encouraged to defy her parents and elope with the actor with whom she is in love. Emmeline’s view’ of the proposal does not follow the wished-for lines but she tells her disappointed friend that she has reasons for the advice she gives. The “reasons” are found in the story of her own love affair, extending over twenty-five years, during which her love for Anthony Dyke, an explorer, remains a secret between them. She threw away eventhing for love, following her “man” in some dangerous adventures, one in South America taking up a great part of the narrative, and suffering much for her courageous defiance of the conventions. It is a powerful story, told with a clear-eyed understanding of humanity and a Supreme confidence in the ultimate rewards wailing for those who deserve them. “Spinster of this Parish” in its second reading is even more effective than it was at the first, and it has confirmed me in my opinion that Maxwell is one of the really great novelist? of this time. My copy comes from the pub-

BEYOND THE BORDER.—If you “look to your atlas, please.” and allow your eye to roam to the upper left while you have India right side up, you will see Balkistan beyond the north-west frontier and leading in the direction of Turkestan. This is the locality staked out by “Ganpat” for a lively romance told under the title of “The Voice of Dashin." "Ganpat,” who served with the Indian Army in private life is M. L. A. Gompertz, his literary nom-de-plume being really a nom-de-guerre since it is the name he bore while he was a Second Lieutenant in the Indian Army, because it was the nearest the native soldiers could get to Gompertz. It happens also to be the name bestowed by the Mahrattas on the god of good fortune. From these facts we may deduce that Gompertz, as a young officier, understood India and the Indians and as he later journeyed into Tibet, it is not difficult to understand why he can write so vividly of the wildly, romantic country through which “The Voice of Dashin” takes us. The plot dcah primarily with the search for Norman Fraser and his daughter Janet who were first reported killed in the Russian revolution, but who later managed to get a letter through to their friends revealing that they had escaped only to be captured by the SlantEyed people to the north-west of India. From these they had in turn escaped, but the father had been recaptured, and Janet was picked up by the People of the Hand, who believed her presence to be the part fulfilment of a tribal prophecy of great importance. Major Louis Kervers, who tells the story, is asked to take up the search by Nellie Fraser. Norman’s sister, and with a party of friends, he sets off for the Hinterlands of the Karakorum. There adventures worthy of Rider Haggard at his best await them. The search is successful but after Janet is found there is to be discovered the place where Norman is held prisoner and the way to get the two of them back to civilisation. “Ganpat’s” story abounds in incident, but it is much more than a mere story of action. He has a fine eye for colour and his knowledge of the East enables him to reproduce the “feel” of the wild lands in a way that stamps these scenes as authentic. The war with the Slant people is a gorgeous affair, with Monocloid’s two-yak power tank as an effective offensive weapon and the centre-piece of some diverting situations. Some love-stories wind in and out of this excellent yarn, which reaches a satisfactory conclusion all too soon. “Ganpat” is an excellent fellow in every way and those who miss “The Voice of Dashin” will lose one of the most entertaining yarns of the year. It is published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, whence comes my copy.

MONEY AND MARRIAGE.—The impoverished English nobleman who married the American heiress is still the subject of uncomplimentary interest in the United States where the newspapers delight in finding sordid motives for almost every act involving non-Americans, and the newspapers who ad-, . this conventional view of international marriages will probably find “Little Mrs Manington” diverting because it concerns itself with a love match that nearly came to disaster in its battle with the consequences of this popular view. The man who marries money does not necessarily marry for money. At least Richard Manington, the nephew and heir of an English peer, did not do so and the rich American girl, Helen Bredon, he marries is not looking for a title, though she is human enough to take the fact into account when, challenging the conventions, she accepts him. In England, however, she finds conditions remarkably different to those which have given her freedom to say what she willed and when. Her money, in spite of her bast efforts, is a handicap to her because Manington is suspicious that his comparative poverty is an excuse for her generosity to deprive him of some of his responsibilities. He is a politician young man in line for a Cabinet appointment, but his old uncle, cynical and intensely material, thinks far more of turning the golden fortune of the American wife to profitable account. She

plots with him to use her money without I reference to her husband and a series of misunderstandings begin. The contest between the two is narrated with.an accompaniment on the well-known triangle, formed by the persistent efforts of an unscrupulous “man ’.bout town” keen to use for his own advantage the domestic difficulties created by Helen’s wealth, and her entertaining indiscretions. Such a story, of course, can have only one ending, but Cecil Roberts, the author of “Little Mrs Manington” uses the dramatic suspense rather cleverly in working to the eminently satisfying finale. The two principal characters are well drawn, particularly the vivacious Helen who is always so charmingly human. I have never read anything else by Cecil Roberts, whose list, of published works includes three novels, a play and a volume of verse, but I do not expect to read anything more entertaining than “Little Mrs Manington” from her pen or from anyone else this year. It is told with a nice dash of comedy and it deserves to be popular. “Little Mrs,Manington” is published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, whence comes my copy.

THE RECKLESS GAMBLE.—Here in “With This Ring” we meet again the girl who splashed the whole of a suddenly acquired fortune in a whirl with chance under

an assumed name and came out with more than she went in with. It has been done before, but every time the story is given a new setting it comes up will nil the novelty of a new episode and the readers of light fiction enjoy it to the full. That being so you can pick up “With This Ring” with absolute confidence. It is a light comedy, told in infectious humour and entertaining in every line. Lila Kemp, who lives in a small town in one of the Eastern States of the land which looks to President Coolidge as its leading citizen receives a thousand dollars for the scenario of a movie play. She buys a wedding ring and decides to have a fling in New York as a married woman—Mrs James Duval. In real life disaster would wait greedily for such an innocent, but in the books they are luckier. They take great risks and win great prizes. That is why people who stay at home in security enjoy reading about these reckless gamblers. Of course, Lila meets with the right man unconventionally, falls in love with him and then dare not reveal herself because she fears she will lose him. Her village admirer appears on the scene, causing her to fly back to her home, and he acquaints the “man” with enough of the facts to make the happy ending possible. Fanny Heaslip Lea. who wrote this amusing confection, handles her slim plot delicately and with sprightliness It is first-rate stuff. My copy from the publishers, Mills and Boon, London.

HO FOR THE TREASURE, BOYS!— An inherited chart, showing the position of a treasure island in the midst of a swamp infested by crocodiles away in the Northern Territory of Australia, supplies the impetus ot the exciting excursion into “The Valley of Adventure” by Edward Vivian Timins, who has written a first-class yarn for boys and for those of us who .are still young enough to delight in tales of breathless bouts with dangers and hair breadth escapes from death. The two young adventurers of the st ry will be envied by all boys, mast gi.ls and many men. These two, Peter and Kane Chisholm, seventeen and fourteen respectively, set out with their father for a holiday jaunt in the north accompanied by Charlie, - blackfellow, with the idea of finding Sanctuary Island which is situated somewhere in Paradise Valley. On the island is to be found rich quantities of gold, but the way is beset by fearsome dangers and none but stout hearts can hope to win through. The boys, who are the principal characters of the story, carry through theperilous expedition with light hearts and they win as they thoroughly deserve. This Is first-class stuff for healthy boys, told r; rily and a good sense of colour. Timms knows the Northern Territory and one feels that- the scene is made of something more substantial than imaginings. “The Valley of Adventure” is a title to remember when one is thinking of books for boy’s stockings at the approach of Christmas. It is p blished by the Cornstalk Publishing Company, of Sydney, whence my copy comes.

SWINBURNE AS CRITIC.—What, there - fore, are the especial qualities of Swinburne as a critic? In the forefront, perhaps, we should place assiduity—an almost superhuman industry which enabled him, for instance, to plough through the unexplored thickets of Blake’s prophetic books, or to analyse and to interpret the most forbidding and the most obscure of Elizabethan dramatists. And in the second place we must place judgment. Not merely the refined taste which could recognise the merits of Crabbe and Collins, or could prefer the prose of Musset to his “fitful and febrile” poetry. Not even the perspicacity which could place Stendahl above the then still popular Merimee or could point out to an obtuse public the merits of Whistler or of Meredith. Not merely a felicity of analysis which could thus portray Dryden—“He had nothing in him of plebeian fire, and nothing of patrician chivalry. He had, as we may not doubt, a just and due sense of honesty, but scarcely ... a high or tender sense of honour.” Nor is the essential value of Swinburne’s critical work to be looked for only in that moral daring which could proclaim that Browning was not ’obscure, and Tennyson scarcely lucid; it is to be found in a particular quality of illumination, in a gift of judgment which, in his serener moments . . . amounted almost to vision, and through which he anticipated ... a more enlightened opinion on such poets as Coleridge, Byron, Tennyson, Arnold, Morris, and Rossetti—an opinion which we, with our advantage of increased perspective, may perhaps regard as obvious, but which was then unquestionably original and daring. . . . His method was the method of sympathy, of generosity, of enthusiasm; he sought always for what was best, feeling that an author should be judged solely by his masterpieces and not by his defects. “For love,” he wrote, “and judgment must be one in those who would look into such high and lovely things.”—Harold Nicolson, in “Swinburne.” SAWDUST.—The late Viscount Chaplin’s memoirs, prepared by his daughter, Lady Londonderry, will be published shortly. The Murrays announce a Scots novel called “The Red Apothecary” by Mr John Horne, and its peculiarity is that it is written in genuine, but intelligible, vernacular. Sir Richard Terry is the author of a book “On Music's Borderland,” which Fisher Un van will have ready in the early autumn.