A Literary Log

Southland Times, Issue 22293, 7 April 1934, Page 11

A Literary Log

RoMed by Ma.

BOOKS ON THE TABLE “The Breton” (R- J- White.) “The Woman Sunday” (Marjorie M. Price.) “The Turned Down Page” (Mairi O’Nair.) “Obelists en Route” (C. Daly King.) “Death Among the Professors” (K. Sproul.)

A HERO’S EPITAPH

White’s Fine Historical Nove'

Armand de Chateaubriand, cousin of Rene, entered the service of the king shortly before the revolution, and he became famous as a “Defrauder of the Guillotine” so many people did he help to escape from France. The Scarlet Pimpernel’s imaginary exploits were no more exciting, no more romantic than the real doings of Armand, whom R. J. White has made the principal figure, the hero of his historical novel “The Breton.” For some of his material, White acknowledges his debt to E. Herpin’s “The Hero of Brittany” but though that novel deals with Armand’s exploits, this book concerns itself more closely with the adventures that followed the rout of the Army of the Princess at Valmy, when Kellerman led the ragged forces of republican France against the wearers of the White Cockade. After that stinging defeat, the emigres fled, and Armand, sorely wounded, found refuge in Jersey, the Island of Friends. There he was nursed back to health and married to Jenny Le Brun, after the death of Captain Johnson, a fictitious Englishman who comes into White’s story as an English Secret Service agent and Jenny’s fiance. For some years, Armand lived in Jersey, making a living as a trader, but giving himself to the service of the Bourbons on occasion. Finally there came the call to action, and Armand, left his fireside and the affectionate family in Jersey, to participate in one of the suicidal efforts to stir revolt in Brittany. Napoleon was then at the height of his power, and Fouche, the effective Minister of Police, was in close touch with the doings of the Bourbon supporters. The expedition was doomed almost before it started, but it was the sea, which Armand loved and trusted, that really gave him up to his enemies. Twice he set sail in a small boat to reach the haven of Jersey, and twice the weather conditions were against him. The second time he sailed beyond Jersey in the storm and when Armand landed at Bretteville, it was to fall into the hands of Fouche’s agents. Rene de Chateaubriand tried to save the life of his cousin with a petition to Napoleon, but failed and the epitaph of the hero he wrote in the pages of “Memoires d’Outre Tombe”:

On the day of the execution I intended to go with my cousin to his last battlefield; but I could not find a carriage and had to run all the way to the plain of Grenelle. I arrived, sweating, a second too late: Armand had been shot against the walls of Paris. His head was shattered; a butcher’s dog was licking the blood and brains. I followed the cart which carried the bodies of Armand and his two companions, the plebeian and the noble. Quintal and Goyon. to the Vaugirard cemetery. I saw my cousin for the last time, but I could not recognize him the shot had disfigured him. he had no longer a face; I could not see how the years had changed it. nor could I see death in that shapeless and bleeding figure; he remained young in my mind, as he had been in our days together at the siege of Thionville. He was shot on Good Friday: and beyond my sorrows I saw the figure of the Crucified. Whenever I walk on the road of the plain of Grenelle, I stop to look at the bullet marks, still showing on the wall. Had the bullets of Bonaparte left no other trace in the world than this, his name would be no longer' upon the lips of men.

This is a larger epitaph to a gallant gentleman, who served a losing cause because he had sworn loyalty to it, though he was conscious of changes for the better the revolution had wrought in France. It is an historical novel which recaptures the atmosphere of place and time, which reads, not like fiction, but like resurrection of history', substantial in flesh and properly clothed. It carries with it all the excitement of recovered fact and does justice to a hero of Brittany. “The Breton” by' R. J. White (Messrs Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, London).

TWO ON AN ISLAND If Cinderella is always successful in novels or on the stage, the Robinson Crusoe theme has a fascination just as powerful for the readers of popular fiction. Those who live within the restricted limits of towns find heaps of thrills in the stories of castaways, especially when the masterful servant is really a prince in disguise. This is the course Marjorie M. Price has set in “The Woman Sunday.” When her fiance’s yacht is wrecked, after an encounter with Chinese pirates, Sunday Fletcher is thrown upon a small island with the yacht’s engineer, Robinson, a man with whom sbe had had some stormy interviews as a result of her own high-handed ways. The competent engineer and the inept girl have to work to save themselves, and before they established themselves sufficiently to have some hope of existence he has threatened to spank her. Why he didn’t do it instead of threatening only the author knows. The course is taken | over some rough country, but just when they have confessed their mutual I love the rescue comes and troubles I multiply for them. In the end, however, the prince throws off his disguise I and Sunday finds herself destined to be a duchess, instead of a small farmer’s wife. It is lightly written and a very pleasant story, with some unusual touches to enliven it. “The Woman Sunday” by Marjorie M. Price (Messrs Mills and Boon Ltd., London). OUT OF THE PAST The mistakes of the past play a big part in “The Turned Down Page” by Mairi O’Nair. Eileen Forsythe, young, beautiful and happy, discovered, on the eve of her marrige with Dr Richard Mannering, a rising Harley Street specialist, that some letters she had written in the enthusiasm of a schoolgirl infatuation were to be used for blackmail. She went to the rooms of the man who held them, the man from whose embraces she had drawn back just in time, and found him. dead, stabbed. She took what she believed to be her letters only to find later that the envelopes contained only blank paper. But there the trouble did. not end. The man’s wife, who had killed him, had taken the letters and for revenge told Mannering’s mother. . Mrs Mannering insisted on Eileen giving up all hope of marriage, and Eileen to carry out her wishes disappeared. Mannering was not a weak man. He set out in pursuit of her and finally, after many months of suffering the pair are re-united. Eileen is vindicated and all ends happily. The author, fortunately has a good sense of humour. Banky, Eileen’s landlady is an extraordinary character, well drawn and interesting, and in this bright, light romance she is an important figure. The story moves quickly and easily. “The Turned-Down Page” by Mairi O’Nair (Messrs Mills and Boon Ltd., London).

WHO ARE OBELISTS?

[ New ground in detective fiction is not easy to find, but C. Daly King 3 f made a discovery and used it in “Obelg ists at Sea,” one of the most original e mystery stories of recent years. One e quickly realized that the author had p used new people, new places, new methods, and the result was something 0 that the theatrical press agents would n have labelled “the different mystery (, novel.” Assured by the reception of that excellent yarn, the author has e written “Obelists en Route,” in similar 1 vein, but this time the action in which ), crime and professional psychologists ,t are involved takes place on a fast train s running from New York to San Frane cisco without passenger stops. It is a - luxurious train, equipped with a swime ming bath, and it is in this bath that 1 the first evidence of crime is found — s the dead body of a famous banker is j discovered. Apparently he was drown- , ed, but the obelists (this word we are / told means those who harbour sus--3 picions) are not so sure, though. 1 as the detective attached to the train i says, the traces left by the criminal were i “so negligible as to mean almost noth- > ing.” In reading King’s mysteries you 1 must resist the temptation to peep at the s guide to the clues through which the 1 investigators of the book were able to , reach their goal That is fair to the i reader, and so the reader should play > fair and leave the guide untouched , until after he has finished the yarn. : “Obelists en Route” is so entertaining ! that the temptation to skip to the guide i should not have enough time to clasp : the reader. This is a first-class job. ■ “Obelists en Route” by C. Daly ’ King (Messrs Collins Ltd., London).

: o—O—o KILLING PROFESSORS Should professors be killed? If they provide a good story the answer is in • the affirmative, and “Death Among the Professors” by K. Sproul is a good story. ■ Richard Wilson, barrister and criminologist, has taken a post at a univer- : sity and at his first dinner meets Professor Storm and Professor Shearer. Both are teachers of physics and appear to hate each other quite actively. Storm, the young man, is found dead in a clothes cupboard that very night and the next morning the elderly Shearer is discovered with his throat cut. Storm’s death is believed to have been due to natural causes and Shearer’s looks like suicide, but Wilson has other ideas and the story deals with his efforts to unravel what he believes to be a first-class mystery. For one thing Wilson must be admired: his patient adherence to the theory that even the best of the criminals make mistakes. In this story the criminal, who is cunning enough to be regarded as a High Arch of the order, makes a very small blunder but it is enough to lead to his undoing and to the solution of the mystery. Sproul is a lively writer and though he is more concerned with ingenuity than character, he has written an absorbing mys- • tery tale with some unusual features. “Death Among the Professors” by K. Sproul (Messrs Eyre and Spottiswoode Ltd., London).

A TRAIL OF CHIPS Bernard Shaw’s preface to “On the Rocks” refers to the political necessity for killing people. In it he says: Killing can be cruelly or kindly done; and the deliberate choice of cruel ways, and their organization as popular pleasures, is sinful; but the sin is in the cruelty and the enjoyment of it, not in the killing.

Later in this preface he adds: “I dislike cruelty, even cruelty to other people, and should therefore like to see all cruel people exterminated. But I should recoil with horror from a proposal to punish them." He instances the Crucifixion of Jesus as “cruelty for its own sake, for the pleasure of it.” In this preface, too, Shaw says that he had been asked to dramatize the Gospel story, but “Jesus would not defend Himself, so that the trial would be “disappointing on the stage, which is one thing that a drama must not be.” Then he writes an imaginary account of the trial in which Jesus replies to Pilate’s questions. The dialogue opens: Pilate: Are you the King of the Jews? Jesus: Do you really want to know? or have these people outside put it into your head to ask me? Pilate: Am I a Jew. that I should trouble myself about you? Your own people and their priests have brought you to me for judgment. What have you done? Jesus: My Kingdom is not of this world: if it were, my followers would have fought the police and rescued me. But that sort of thing does not happen in my kingdom.

Pilate: Then you are a king? Jesus: You say so. I came into this world and was born a common man for no other purpose than to reveal the truth. And everyone capable of receiving the truth recognizes it in my voice. Pilate: What is truth? Jesus: You are the first person I have met intelligent enough to ask me that question. Finally Pilate “makes an end” because Christ has blasphemed against Caesar and the Empire * * * Sir Reginald Blomfield in “Modernisms: A Study” (Macmillan) roasts modem architecture: The fashionable idea just now of a great commercial building is that of a gigantic box in which holes are punched at regular intervals for doors and windows. Composition. silhouette, and proportion are disregarded. Of course, the architect of to-day says he must supply “buildings of to-day that reflect what moderns think and do and want.” Evidently, says Sir Reginald, they want to "sit on chairs made with steel tubing which wobble when you sit on them, or on settees of solid glass, and spend their time looking out of the windows with which the Modernist architect usually fills one side of his rooms.” Although efficiency is the modem battle-cry, Sir Rerginald finds that restrooms are not restful and that a building in Regent street had no windowsills to protect the walls from the drippings of windows: “The window-sill is omitted, and wide, shallow, vertical grooves are thoughtfully provided from the bottom of one window opening to the top of the window below, in order that none of the rain-water felling on the window above may be lost to the wall and window below.” No wonder he declares that the principal weakness of the apostles of efficiency is that they are inefficient * * * “The Countryman’s Jewel” (Chapman and Hall), edited by Marcus Woodward is a mixture of historical novel and antique book of instructions, principally Sussex. This seems to refer to warts, those magnified blemishes: To cause knobs to waste and go away in any part of the bodie whatsoever, take the oldest and mouldiest cheese that you can finde, knead it with broth wherein there hath boiled a piece of fat bacon or lard a long time, make thereof a plaister to lay on the place: or else stampe in vinegar Conchula Indica with mirrhe, applie it to the place, and you shall finde a merveilous effect. The spelling is the estimable Wood-

ward’s * * * The Loch monster has been used in a thriller—Patricia Wentworth’s “Fear by Night” (Hodder and Stoughton), but the author says she w’rote the book in 1932 before there was the slightest hint of a monster in Loch Ness. This is how she describes her monster;

Over the ledge and the two men the head hung poised, like a snake’s head ready to strike. There was a dark mane that made it most horrible. The water ran dripping down it. And the head _ began to move, bending on the neck, coming up against the rock, lipping it with a wet snout as if to feel its way.

This is like most of the sea-serpent descriptions that have appeared from time to time and evidently they inspired Miss Wentworth. The Loch Ness “discovery” was fortunate. 8.8. C. PRONUNCIATIONS A new list of words as they will be spoken by the suave (swayve) voices of broadcasting announcers is issued by the 8.8. C. The recommendations, some of them not a little piquant (p-eekant) are issued by the B.B.C’s Advisory Committee on Spoken English, which is under the chairmanship of Mr Bernard Shaw. Mr Shaw was on his world cruise, learning, perhaps, to distinguish between larboard (-larboard) and starboard (-starbord), when the list appeared, but no doubt his concurrence (“u” as in “but”) with the recommendations may be assumed. Some of the words, as they will be heard in the intervals of jazz-bands (-jazz-bands) and vaudiville (vodeville), are as follows (the accent following the - hypen in each case): — Word. Recommendation.

Burnnoose Burn-oose. Confiscatory -Confiscaytory Cotillion, cotillon Cot-illion Crinoline -Crinnoleen Decorous -Deckorus Demonic Deem-onic Dissoluble Diss-ollewble Economical Eecon-ommical Eyot Ayt Fascism -Fashism Gewgaw Both “g’s” as in “got” Gillyflower “G” as in “gem.” Holocaust -Hollocawst Integer Int-ejer Kilometre -Killomeeter Mirage -Mirraazh Nicotinism -Niccoteenism Overlap (noun) -Overlap Overlap (verb) Overl-ap Paradisiac Parrad-issiack Recusant -Reckewzant Revolting Rev-olting Scena -Shayna Scenario Sen-aario School-house Sch-oolhouse Species -Speesheez Spiritual -Spiritewal Triptych -Triptick Violoncelloa Vyolonch-ello Besides Mr Shaw, the members of the committee are Mr A. Lloyd James, Prof. Daniel Jones, Sir Johnston ForbesRobertson, Mr Logan Pearsall Smith, and Prof. Lascelles Abercrombie.