THE LITERARY

Southland Times, Issue 20014, 30 October 1926, Page 13

THE LITERARY

~&Oi.LEOB'rI

IOTA

PAGANS AT PLAKOS.—It looks as if John Buchan is never going to be happy again unless he has a map as a frontispiece for his novel—his war history activities probably sowed the seeds of this desire—but as long as he produces romances like “The Dancing Floor” it will be an easy matter to indulge this little weakness. Buchan is a Romanticist through and through and he is strengthened by a Naturalistic accent that makes it possible for him to give the most fantastic of scenes the substance of actuality. ‘The Dancing Floor” is Romance in modern attire, assisted by the introduction of a Classical atmosphere in the firm of pagan rites with which the Dancing Floor of the story is connected. A succession of dreams impress on the youthful Vernon Millbume the belief that they are forewarnings of certain events which will influence his life. Involved in these is Kore, the young heiress to the Greek island of Plakos. Millbume meets Kore and they quickly develop a mutual hatred. From country house and hunting field, the story shifts to this island to which Kore goes with the idea of cleaning up the estate and getting rid of it. Her ancestors have been a fairly wild crew, saturated with Paganism, decadent and utterly undesirable. Kore, intensely modern in her outlook, cold and bold, is anxious to eradicate this stain, blit while she is engaged in the task the inhabitants of the island, the man will assist you to understand the scene, decide that the evils which have fallen on them have their origin in the wickedness of the former owners and, as Kore is their representative they decide to sacrifice her in accordance with some Pagan custom that the gods may be appeased. That the cycle of agricultural profit, of a deflated currency, disturbed politics or bad drainage may have been the cause of their troubles is a point on which they do not spend any time. Kore, though she has no wish to leave this planet, accepts the position, as she is bound to co since she is one against a larg? number, but chance brings Vernon Miilburne to the island in a yacht, and he sets ab.;ut the task of rescuing the young lady he d slikes. Plakos it is that occurred in his dreams, and the Dancing Floor :s .he place of sacrifice. Thrown together by the hatred of the ignorant islanders, these two come to understand each other and Mr Buchan is able to finish his story happily. The blending of the Classical and the modem is neatly done and the scenes on the island give us chances to read the author in his descriptive best. From start to finish there is excitement, and as rhe scenes are presented reahs.icaliy they provide the reader with a succession of first-class thrills. Mr. Buchan in this new field has acquitted himself as well as in anything he has written along these lines. No one to-day gives these romantic adventures just the same literary dignity, no one gives authenticity to the fantastic so gracefully. “The Dancing Floor” ran through four printings in the Old Country in four months and it is safe to predict a big audience for it in this. It is published* by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, London, whence comes my copy.

THE CLASH OF TEMPERAMENT—In a very human story, Richmal Crompton has carried a step further his "saga” of the Wildings, that solid English family of the Boltwood book-shop, ruled by the energetic, commanding mother, and established firmlv on ancient rocks of respectability. David Wilding, the son, has married Hero, the daughter of a Boltwood woman and the inheritor of an erratic, artistic temperament. She loves the stolid David as much as he loves her, but she is volatile, where he is heavily substantial, suspicious where he is unquestioningly confident, jealous of the family where he is too much of a Wilding to be jealous of anybody. Hero is determined to be the mistress of her own home, to challenge the rule of her mother-in-law. Mrs Wilding is not a tyrant. She is a woman of capacity, a manager and her quick executive brain enables her to take the sound course without fear of opposition. There are times when one wishes with Hero that David would assert himself but his mother is so accurate in her judgment, so devastatingly capable that one wonders if his regular compliance is not after all the child of wisdom. To Bolt wood come the family of Shannon, spending money briskly and enjoying life to the full, modern and frivolous. Their fondness for music, and their friendship with Hunter, the pianist, give them a special appeal to Hero’s young heart, and she becomes one with them. Mrs Wilding is skeptical, she is suspicious of what to her is the ungodliness of the Shannons, but though she declines to be attracted herself, she waits for the inevitable smash. With the Shannons is Miss Belmont - Aunt Gay- a poor withered woman who is sustaining herself with the fiction of >a dead lover. David knows that this lover never existed, but sympathy snares him into listening to Miss Belmont’s confidences and he allows himself to be sworn to secrecy. No trouble would have come from the incident but for the unreasoning jealousy of Hero. In a wild moment she dashes off to London to Hunter, but the discovery that his brother is her own father saves her and sends her back to Boltwood with the faithful David, to win a better understanding of the Wilding family. This coincidence, utterly unnecessary, is Crompton’s only serious fault in an exceedingly fine study of two temperaments clashing. “David Wilding,” as this second book of the Boltwood Saga is called, is peopled by interesting folk, all of them drawn with quiet skill. The story is told with a rare understanding of human nature which illuminates these pages at times with effective touches of humour. If you have not already met the Wildings, do so at once, taking up first “The Wildings” and then this second book; they are both to be numbered amongst the excellencies of the novels describing English life of to-day. “David Wilding” is published by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, my copy from the publishers.

CINDERELLA AGAIN.— In “With This King” the heroine, taking the money a movie scenario had gained for her, sets out for New York and adventure, but in “The Dream-Maker Man,” by the same author. Fanny Heaslip Lea, Melissa Wayne is fortunate enough to become a reader to a Marchesa anxious to play fairy godmother to modern Cinderellas. The old lady, once a reigning beauty, but now reconciled to her own senility, decides to give the despondent Melissa one year of wealth and position in which to capture a husband with money. Melissa takes the opportunity

eagerly under the guidance of the Marchesa, but very soon she is running her own affairs and giving the dear, imperious old lady as many surprises as she gives the reader. The author quite cleverly introduces quite a number of men with qualifications strong enough to commit the sophisticated reader into all manner of inaccurate forecasts and so she is able to carry through a delightful, if slender, story to the end with a pleasurable touch of excitement. Fanny Heaslip Lea has an excellent sense of humour, which is shown effectively in the early situations • with Luke Kenealey, the first man the experienced reader selects for the role of hero. The actual finish can be left to the author—to deprive the reader of the opportunities for error would be decidedly unfair—but it must not be thought that suspense is the only thing that carries this yarn to its end. “The Dream-Maker Man” makes first-rate light reading; it deserves to be popular—very popular. It is published by Messrs Mills and Boon, of London, whence comes my copy.

UP IN THE HIGHLANDS.—Thomas King of “The Key Above the Door”, the author assures us in his preface is “a compound of gentleman and tramp, hermit and wanderer, scholar and ignoramus, realist and idealist, and of many other things as well—in short a seeker of beauty and a believer in the dominion of reason over imagination.” This sounds like a dual personality, or at least a man of erratic temperament, but King is a human, impulsive fellow, an egotist but a likeable chap all through. He meets with Agnes de Bure on a July day near Loch Ruighi in the Province of Moray, away in the Highlands of Scotland. There are fishing and shooting adventures about the loch, but an intensive love affair flares up and Agnes finds it impossible in her heart to accept the love King is offering her. In her effort to save him she tries to kill that love, but, as usually happens in these cases, she does the very thing she is trying to avoid and finally she surrenders. With the story of their tempestuous love battle, there are scenes to gladden the heart of every Scot, and of everybody who retains a fondness for the out-of-doors. The Highland scene makes a magnificent background, and the author, Maurice Walsh, deals with it justly. He has a fine descriptive pen, and his skill in the characterisation of his people, particularly of Archie MacGillivray, makes a lasting impression. “The Key Above the Door” is published by the Cornstalk Publishing Co., of Sydney.

THE TRAIL OF CHARITY.—Does the ultimate reward always wipe out the suffering caused during the long period of waiting for the rectification of a wrong? The question crops up after reading Margaret Pedler’s “Yesterday’s Harvest,” the story of a man’s assumption of guilt to save the woman he loved. This is not a new theme, but an experienced writer like Margaret Pedler can take up a subject of this kind and give it a new twist, so that the reader is never troubled by the fact that he is going over ground he has already traversed. As a matter of fact most of the plots of the novels—one might say all of them—follow the beaten tracks, the variations being

brought about by the skill of the novelist in the study qf character. “Yesterday’s Harvest,” opens with a prologue, the sowing of the bitter harvest. Violet Granton impulsively takes a string of pearls while she is attending a dance in a private house. The loss is discovered by the host who orders everybody to submit to a search. She tells her lover of her act, and he takes the pearls from her to hide them in the alcove in which they are seated, but unfortunately a chattering friend steps up and the man is forced to tell his host that he is the thief. Years later the man, now a sculptor with the name of Blair Maitland falls in love with Elizabeth I'rayne, but finds that her stepmother is the woman whom he saved from gaol. Unfortunately Elizabeth’s father learns the secret of Maitland’s past, and refuses to consider as a son-in-law a man who has served a term

of imprisonment for admitted theft. Violet Frayne lacks the courage to tell him the facts and Maitland, abandoning all hope of winning Elizabeth marries Poppie Ridgeway, a model he has befriended. Poppie loves him, but realises later his reasons for marrying her and she sets about remedying the mistakes of the others. Her sacrifice brings them all to a new understanding of the events of the past and Maitland faces a future of happiness. He is the chivalrous knight throughout, but he suffers severely for his first attempt to save a woman. Margaret Pedler handles these situations with all the skill that has made her novels popular, and the presentation of Poppie is distinctly good. The story abounds in incident and it is unwaveringly interesting. “Yesterdays Harvest” is published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, my copy from the publishers.

SECTlONALlSM.—Sectionalism is naive and even sinister when its votaries merely distrust those who do not live where they do; when they measure everything by local and, therefore, narrow standards, and when they refuse to see beyond local barriers, or to realise the commonness and kinship of all life. The merely sectional idea reaches a climax of folly and hurtfulness when it exalts complaisancy and self-satisfaction • above open-mindedness and constant analysis. Thoughtfully considered, force, and fruitfulness, and beauty inhere in the sectional idea, and it is very 7 superficial not to perceive these qualities and very stupid not to reckon with them. The story of our country is the story of great sections developing individual characteristics under the pressure of social and economic conditions, and then, by the strength of sheer local pride and distinctiveness, reacting upon other sections, and thus shaping into unity that complex result which we call national character.

Let us put aside, then, all thought of sinsiter sectionalism in thinking of the work here undertaken, and centre our thought upon sectionalism considered simply as love of home, and interest and affection for one’s neighbours. The great literatures of the world have been the work of those who loved their home lands, and who saw so deeply and so accurately into the meaning of life just about them, that they uttered their experiences in forms of such simple beauty and truth as to touch the universal heart, and so attained cosmopolitanism. . . . One cannot imagine Homer and the great Greeks travelling abroad for inspiration. It is not strange to our quieter thought that England was the crystal drop in which Shakespeare mirrored the world’s experience; nor do the quiet lakes seem too narrow a theatre to body forth to

Wordsworth’s mind his interpretative vision of nature. . . . Indeed, an essential condition of all true literature is that it shall have birth out of individual experience and in an intensely local atmosphere; but there is also the other essential condition that it shall be so charged with sympathy and broadened by understanding as to have universal application.—Edwin A. Aiderman in the introduction to “Library of Southern Literature.” SAMUEL BUTLER’S FAM ILY.—Samuel Butler’s famous novel, “The Way of All Flesh,” is, largely autobiographical, and the chief characters had their living prototypes in his own family. The harsh picture of his parents and sisters, and the ironical criticism to which they are subjected, received support, rather than modification, in the “Notebooks of Samuel Butler.” Mrs Garnet, whose mother was a cousin of Butler’s mother, defends his relations in a book which Dent will publish ready. It reveals the family circle at Langar in a new light without, however, obscuring Butler’s point of view in the life-long feud, or belittling his genius. SAWDUST.—Robert W. Service, the “Klondyke Poet,” has written a novel, “The Master of the* Microbe,” which Fisher Unwin publish. Mr. Ford Madox Ford, has finished a new story which he entitles “A Man Could Stand Up.” “The Wolf Pack” is a new romance of the Wild West, which Ridgwell Cullum has written and which Cecil Palmer announces. A fine illustrated edition of that delightful book, “The Surgeon’s Log,” by Dr. Johnson Abraham, is appearing with Chapman and Hall. Sir Ernest Benn has other coming books besides Dean Inge’s “England,” which bear on English history. A study of George IV. by Shane I>eslie will be ready immediately. A monograph on Benjamin Disraeli, by D. L. Murray, is promised for The same month is to bring Philip Guedalla’s “Palmerston,” a work for which he has had access to hitherto' unpublished papers in the possession of the Ashley family. Further, modern England may be expected to occupy some space in the memoirs of Dr. Benes, one of the most notable figures of Czecho-slovakia. Colonel Drury, whom we know by “The Peradventures of Private Pagett” and other witty stories of the Marines, has been writing his memories for Fisher Unwin. He entitles them “In Many ,Parts” in token of the fact that they cover a wide experience of service by sea and land. Colonel Drury was an eye-witness 'of two haunting seadramas, the wreck of the gunboat Wasp on Tory Island in the early ’eighties and the sinking of the flagship Victoria in the Mediterranean. He was brought into particular contact with Earl Roberts, as well as with other celebrities of the time.

Sir James Barrie is telling the story of how he came to evolve and write “Peter Pan,” in a book that Partridge is to publish. This is a children’s book, “The Treasure Ship,” which Lady Cynthia Asquith has edited in succession to her last year’s “Flying Carpet.” She has contributions from other well-known literary people, among them Mr John Galsworthy and Mr A. A. Milne, whose own new child’s book, written around his boy, Christopher Robin, is also due.