VIGOROUS LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 23610, 10 September 1938, Page 14

VIGOROUS LIFE

Pioneer Days In New Zealand

IMPORTANT NOVEL BY G. B. LANCASTER

PROMENADE. By G. B. Lancaster. Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney. Price 8/6.

Reviewed by M. H.'HOLCROFT

G. B. Lancaster has written her New Zealand novel in the years of mature talent. Experienced in the arts of directing a story, in giving it a continuous and balanced existence and peopling it with credible characters, she has turned to the records of colonization and taken from them the materials of drama and romance, fitting them imaginatively into the background of a young and turbulent country. A brief introductory chapter depicts the Levels in England, where Peregrine—dark, proud and selfcontained, with a fondness for arranging other people’s lives in accordance with his pwn patterns of behaviour—is introduced as a jnan who expects to make the fortunes of his family and to gain power and honour for himself. But first he marries Sally, who is just fifteen

years of age and too scared to protest against this sudden coming of matrimony. With her goes Darien, her younger sister, a confident and explosive young person who torments Peregrine by refusing to take him seriously, and whose fatal attraction for sentimental males is to cause many pangs and some major incidents in the new world of the south. TAKING ROOT In New Zealand the Lovels settle first at Kororareka Beach, remaining there until the Maoris have their night of flame and violence, and thereafter moving south to the growing settlement of Auckland. Peregrine takes his opportunities, beats his children (for Sally is rapidly providing him with a family) and is well on his way to becoming an influential man in the colony. All this time Sally is a perfect wife, in spite of her secret love for her cousin Jermyn, a passionate fellow who would rim off with her if she did not resist him with all her timid strength, reminding him helplessly that they will have each other in eternity (for surely, in those pleasant ultramundane places, she would not be expected to promenade with Mr Level, that terrifying husband?. So she remains quietly m her big new house, watching the children grow, into brightand dreaming youngsters in spite , of repression from their father, and hoping and fearing most of all for Roddy and Tiffany, who seem to be expressing her own hidden dreams in their yearning for bold action and the fullness of life. Roddy defies his father and goes off to play his flute up and down the country; Tiffany.makes a secret marriage that turns out to have been a mistake, and is in need of clean air above the tussock country of Canterbury before she can think again of love and happiness. The family spreads out in many directions. Jermyn hides his disappointed love and makes a splash in journalism, writing articles of the sizzling kind that would break the hearts of our latter-day politicians (they seem to have been tougher then), and damning the authorities with a ferocious sarcasm. Darien marries an impecuqious lord, loses him in the Maori war and turns her energies to sheep-farming in the south, where she makes much money and is adored by the menfolk. Solid Sir John Lovel establishes a farm, partly to escape from his self-sufficient wife, the bustling and match-making Caroline, and is killed by Maori raiders on his own veranda. Peregrine stands firm for progress and the family honour; and the varied brood of relations departs to new homes, marriages, deaths, and the flow of life in a developing colony. These family events are inseparable from the larger events incidental to the processes of settlement. The interruption of the Maori war makes a ferment in the North Island; but in the south the Canterbury plains are being opened up by the sheep men and in Westland they are grubbing excitedly for gold. Miss Lancaster paints the wide and varied canvas with colours that have life in them. She looks rather amusedly at the first encounters of politics, the resistance to governors, the confused and noisy efforts to put the country on its feet, the emergence of a new generation, born in the country, that wants to handle its own affairs. These old controversies are revived with a surprising warmth and reality, and can be studied by readers who may be interested to notice how little the people and their politicians have changed. The author shows the quaint procession, and dwells upon it with a faintly ironic humour that suggests a mellowed attitude towards the climbing efforts of men and women in their brief allowance of time. THE BACKGROUND There are many good things in this book: incidents that bring the quickened pulse, passages that seem to have caught authentic moments in our young history, scattered comments that have the salt of wisdom, and above all an admirable control of the varied characters. The story moves from one individual to another without the sense of jar or interruption which betrays a loss of grip; all the transitions down the years take place gradually, with a sense of passing time that fails only towards the end, where a slight acceleration takes place. There is no deliberate attempt to convey a composite picture of the background, perhaps because the movements of the characters prevent the slow growth of a single scene—as was possible in Jane Mander’s book, “The Story of a New Zealand River.” Casual passages sometimes catch the essence of a scene in that imaginative insight which is beyond the scope of superficial description (notably in that picture of

the Canterbury Plains as a “monstrous level living thing, sprawling duncoloured against all the horizons like some neolithic animal, breathing so steadily and awfully with the wind running in its tussock hair”); but for the most part the outer scene takes its shape almost accidentally, in the flow of events. New Zealand readers will want nothing more than this: their own memories can supply the inner richness of association. Overseas readers, however, may find it hard to approach this vivid and confused world; for them the background may seem slightly inchoate. Whether or not this is a weakness in the book must depend on personal viewpoints. In most other ways “Promenade” is immensely satisfying: the critics of a future time may give it a high place among the New Zealand novels of this generation;