BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

MR. CHESTERTON’S CHARM

(By

C.E.)

“Four Faultless Felons,” by G. K. Chesterton: Cassell and Company, Ltd., London and Melbourne, through Thomas. Avery and Sons, Ltd., New Plymouth. Mr. Chesterton is such a remarkable personage in. the literary world of today that one cannot but be interested in the appearance of a new work from his facile pen. He has been ca.led a literary expert, which suggests, of course, something deeper and more expansive than mere ability to write for the entertainment of not too discriminating readers, and his intimate biographies and essays bear testimony to his success. But while he is the well informed literary student and;critic he is also a skilful creator of fiction, and his taste runs, paradoxically enough, in the direction of the mysterious as exemplified so often and so charmingly in his recitals of the exploits of his Father Brown, who takes rank with shell' ‘ great characters as Sherlock Holmes. '

One fancies that it must be in his moments of relaxation that Mr. Chesterton turns his thoughts to fiction, and it must have been a particularly happy moment of this kind in which he conceived the idea of his latest volume, “Four Faultless Felons.” It comprises the stories of four men, each of whom is a self-confessed villain, but it turns out that the villainy is not what it has appeared to be on the surface, for each of the pseudo-criminals has merely adopted a guise. Thus his very real virtues are skilfully concealed until the proper moment..... The title of this book inevitably challenges comparison with the “Four Just Men” of that specialist in thrillers, Mr. Edgar Wallace. But there is all the difference in the world between Mr. Wallace’s avengers and Mr., Chesterton’s villains, who not only do not commit crimes but actually prevent them. And there is just as much difference between the methods of the two writers. No one would suggest that Mr. Wallace’s work is crude, .but one must admit that Mr. .Chesterton’s. plots,., characterisations and use of language are on a quite different plane. His ‘ plots are conspicuously original—if one may suggest a comparative degree of. originality—his characters are capable of far finer analysis than are those of most works of fiction, and Mr. Chesterton never forgets that a man of his literary standing must be a guardian of the purity of his mother tongue. He lias, of course, his own philosophy of life, which he weaves into his stories with the shrewdest skill, and that is why .they always .'convey the impression of being well- ballasted. Leet in my eagerness to enthuse over Mr. Chesterton’s literary charm I should have made him appear rather toe “highbrow” ..for the ardent lover of fiction, let me hasten to sdy that no one need be. afraid to take up his book of stories. They are rattling good yarns, and even when the characters talk Chcatertonian philosophy there is no danger of their getting above the heads of the audience. ■;

The first of the four stories will illus-

trate this point. It concerns Lord Tallboys, Governor of “a strip on the edge of Egypt,” which, the author says, is “called-for our convenience. Polybia.” One Governor has been killed there and another nearly killed, and Lord Tallboys is soon to be shot in the leg. With him in this outlandish place are his two nieces, one of them married, and his nephew, a boy who is backward and causes his friends Some anxiety. The .faultless felon in the case is the boy’s

tutor, who has his own ideas about the government of strips of British territory and when he opens his soul to the unmarried niece enlarges upon some of these ideas in the most interesting fashion. ”• '

The niece has been obsessed with the feeling that there is something strange about°herself and her family, and when Tallboys i is • shot she wonders whether her young brother is the culprit. Here is Mr. Chesterton’s opportunity to philosophise, and the tutor becomes his mouthpiece. . “You once told me,” he says to Barbara, “you feared for the .family sanity, merely because you had bad dreams and brooded over things of your own imagination. Believe me, it’s not the imaginative people who become insane. It’s not they who are mad, even when they are morbid. They can always be woken up from bad dreams by broaderprospects and brighter visions —because they are imaginative. The men who go mad are the unimaginative. 'The stubborn stoical men who have only room for one idea and take it literally. The sort of man who seems to be silent but stuffed to bursting, congested—” • There is no cause for alarm when one encounters such a passage as that,j for it is a thoroughly effective embellishment of the story. I have no space to detail the plots of the other three stories, each entirely different from the rest. The last of them perhaps is the lightest—a very clever bit of fooling. It concerns the small kingdom of Pavonia, whose identity “may well be left vague, so long as it is firmly stipulated that it was not in the Balkans, where so many romancers have rushed to stake out claims ever since Mr. Anthony Hope effected his coup d’etat in Ruritania.” Mr. Chesterton has a delicate sense of humour, frequently of a rather sarcastic kind, and the more penetrating on that account. His story of the alarm created among the heads of Pavonia by a practical joker’s skill in manufacturing the semblance of a revolutionary atmosphere is most excellent fun. I should like to quote much of the third stdry, concerning the household of Nadoway, whose name was “in one sense famous” by reason of the advertising of “Nadoway’s Nubs,” a special biscuit. Mr. Chesterton pokes great fun at this advertising. After mentioning some of its features he adds: “Equally familiar is the more modern patriotic poster representing a British Sailor working a machine-gun, from which a shower of Nubs is perpetually pouring upon the public. This somewhat, unjustly exaggerates the deadly character of the Nubs. He who has been privileged to put a Nub to his lips has Certainly been somewhat at a loss to distinguish it from other and lesser biscuits. But to have a Nub embedded in the body, by the ordinary process of digestion, has never beeu known to be actually fatal like a bullet.” It is a many-sided appeal that “Four Faultless Felons” must make to readers, The lover of detective stories, the reader who enjoys real fun, the admirer of literary grace —all these will be wise to include Chesterton’s delightful book iu their next order to th© bookseller.