BOOK OF THE WEEK

Taranaki Daily News, 1 August 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOK OF THE WEEK

A CHARMING TRIFLE

(By

C.E.)

’ ' -jßudolph and Amina, or The Black Crook,” by Christopher Morley: Faber and Faber, Limited, London, through Thos. Avery and Sons, Ltd., New Plymouth.

Mr. Christopher Morley seems to have been in retirement for some considerable time; at any rate, one cannot readily call to mind the date when the author of “Thunder on the Left” was last heard of. Perhaps he has been wiser than some of his contemporaries, for if he has preferred to conserve his powers rather than fritter them away on “pot-boilers” the result lias justified him. He is, one would imagine, a highly temperamental person, serving a muse that objects to being hurried, and his delicate wit, his pretty gaiety and and his tinge of mysticism are attributes to be guarded jealously. That they are fully worthy of the cafe he has taken of them readers of this new book will gladly agree.

“Rudolph and Amina” is but a trifle occupying less than 200 short pages of large print, but H is, a& people so often find in the case of small things, quite uncommonly good. ■ Mr. Morley calls it a fable, the story of a curious old play told in a fashion of his own. This “grand magical spectacular drama,” written by Charles M. Barras, an old Shakespearean trouper, was first produced at New York in iB6O, and it was recently revived at Mr. Morley’s theatre in Hoboken, across the river from New York. It was, he tells us in his preface, a sort of Faustian pantomime, written mostly in bastard blank verse, and the foundation of its success,' he rather satirically suggests, seems to have been that “the ladies of the ensemble wore tights.” New York preachers thundered against it, and • its success was enormous.

Mr. Morley quotes a delightful reference in a letter written by Charles Dickens: “‘The Black Crook’ has now been played every , night for sixteen months, and is the most preposterous p-eo- to hang ballets on that was ever seen. The people who act in it have not the slightest idea of what it is about, and never had, but after taxing my intellectual powers to the utmost, I fancy that I have discovered Black Crook to be a malignant hunchback with the Powers of Darkness to separate two lovers, and that the Powers of Lightness coming (in no'skirts whatever) to the rescue, he is defeated.” To those facts one may add a little. The scene is laid in the Harz Mountains of Central Germany—famous, Mr. Morley explains, for canaries and fairy tales. Rudolph was an artist, as yet unsuccessful save in his courtship of Amina, a gently born maiden, who lived with her foster-mother, Dame Barbara. It was while Amina was at the cottage doorway cleaning the canary’s cage that Rudolph first saw her, and she made such a pretty picture that he begged her to “stay just like that,” and began to paint. “It was hard for Amina, as she had to stay in an uneasy position for a long time; and the canary, who was having his bath in a soup plate, got quite hoarse. It took several sittings to finish the picture, but this gave Rudolph an opportunity to study her, he saw how beautiful she was, and he fell in love with her. Amina said afterward she was glad it was only the canary, and not herself, who was having a bath while the picture was being painted, for she would have caught a bad cold. Rudolph said it was Flay and the weather would soon be warmer.” On a steep ■ hill above the cottage lived Count Wolfenstein, the feudal lord of the district. Observing the village one morning, through his spy-glass he detected Amina having her bath in a sheltered pool near the cottage. Her beauty affected him as it had Rudolph, and he sent his chamberlain, von Puffengruntz, to make inquiries. The count was a gentleman with a reputation, riven to bavins very hilarious -parties at the castle, °and supposed to have trifled with the affections of many maidens. In this case, however, he was really hard hit. With Dame Barbaras eager consent—the old dear was tremendously flatte'red by the attentions of Puffengruntz—the cottage household was transferred to the castle, and the count laid siege to Amina’s heart, being, it must be noted, punctiliously circumspect. , Where, it will be asked, was Rudolph? He had been trying to sell his masterpiece—Amina and the canary, of course —and returned just as the almost bridal procession to the castle began. His challenge to the count resulted in his being apprehended by the latter’s minions and east into a dungeon. There the count’s ally, the Black Crook, found him and tried to ensnare him in the toils of the evil one, but after strange adventures Rudolph won the favour of the Goddess Statacta and her band of maidens (the ladies of the tights), and was able to return to avenge his wrongs before the count could persuade Amina to marry him.

Such a fairy story as this is, of course, the lightest trifling, and one can only be entertained by a thing of the kind if it is done with distinction. In this case there is no. room for doubt on that score. Mr. Morley has made the best possible use of the original dramatist’s vagaries, for Barras, though he laid his drama supposedly in the seventeenth century, was “not so painfully accurate about it.” So the old fairy tale lent itself pleasantly to what Mr. Morley calls the uses of anachronism and insinuation, and he has done the rest. His occasional importation of ultra-modern ideas and phrases into the old-world atmosphere is accomplished with cunning facility. Here are three sentences from the story of that almost bridal procession: “But even in this moment so strangely mingled of honour and dismay Amina’s presence of mind did not forsake her. In the blue chambray bosom she felt the papery crinkle of the letter she had written, and besought the count to let her stop a, minute at the village post office. He agreed with tender complaisance, supposing it the usual childish desire to celebrate a journey by sending off a few picture postcards.” Mr. Morley is exceedingly witty and at times lightly satirical. There is a gaiety in his writing which is thoroughly infectious, so that one is charmingly amused with his'clever fancies. His tale is really a skit on an old-time drama, and one that sparkles with such brilliance as is rare indeed.

The following books, among others, arrived by the last Home mail: —Idol Worship, E. Savi; A Son of Arizona, Seltzer; Buttercups and Daisies, Compton McKenzie; Grand Hotel, Baum; Snowbirds, Binns; Wanted, Dawe; Unknown Lands, Ibanez; Island of Terror, Tapper; Denton’s Derby, D. Conyers. ! Price-6/- each. Thomas Avery and Sons, (Ltd., Booksellers, New Plymouth,