INTEREST IN BOOKS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1935, Page 12 (Supplement)

INTEREST IN BOOKS

PUBLISHER’S CHOICE DIARY OF AN UNDER-DOG. LUCKY LAPSES OF MEMORY.

“I, James Whittaker,” by James Whittaker. Richard Cowan Ltd.. London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth. The auto-biography of a “greaser” in a cotton mill does not sound a very exciting subject. Realism is all very well, but a purview of life in mean streets is apt to be as monotonous as are those terrible habitations of industrial Britain ih reality. To make the biography of any man, greaser or bishop, worth recording it must lay bare characteristics that are distinctive enough to make personality not only visible but understandable to the ordinary reader. That accomplished, interest is' awakened and sympathy follows where it is needed.

“I, James Whittaker” possesses those qualities and others. Sincerity is .its strongest feature, but it is not merely the sincerity pf the man with a grievance against Fate, it is- a sincerity that shows how a desire for knowledge, for learning that will not only improve material outlook but will give opportunity for the successful pursuit of beauty and the application of its balm to sordid days and grinding poverty. Very rarely does the note of self-pity in this grim story make itself heard. Bom in a# slum in. Edinburgh, .flung about from one Scottish village to another as his fathe- obtained employment, James Whittaker never knew even in childhood what it was to have , sufficient to eat and to wear. Always there was uncertainity, always the debts incurred by past removals to overshadow present family earnings. Before he was ten years old he was working in a Liverpool stable as “boy-of-all-work. “I used to go to the stables long before I went to school,” he says, “again at dinner-time, and after afternoon school; and for all the hours I put in I received the magnificient surti of two shillings per week—l usually had to hint on the Saturday afternoon or night before I got it.” This was in the second year of the war when food prices in England were terrible. So when the stable boy was allowed to go out with the parcel vans he appreciated the opportunity of earning a few extra pence by carrying baggage for seamen from their ships to their homes.

It is an ugly picture of the English working-class struggling for existence that the author has painted. “People to-day,” he says, “often wonder ' why young folk like myself are different; they say that other young folk came through war periods. . . without being as we are. But it is no mystery really. I was only one kid—and in many ways a fortunate kid at that, for I was removed from the dangers endured by the kids of London’s East End —yet those war days have left marks on me, and left memories that, because I am unable to forget them, tinge my present thoughts and actions. . . I saw things which if I saw them to-day would no doubt make me feel squeamish,” and the author gives sufficient ; detail to make it evident that there is no exaggeration in his summing up.. Hunger and misery made him steal as he saw others; his association with religious teaching was most unhappy; he saw his father invalided for many months through poison obtained while making munitions; he saw. his mother toiling 20 hours out of the 24 to keep the home together and who can wonder that the iron which entered his soul has never been dislodged?

Occupation in Laricashire spinning mills in the dreary town of Rochdale did not brighten life. There, however, was bom the determination to “improve himself”, to get education, and there also began the quest for beauty that a .visit to the country and recollection of Scottish village life had re-awakened. Gradually sympathy for his fellow workers developed. He saw their pluck, their kindness to each other, and how the nameless yet everpresent fear Of losing their employment sapped them of so much vitality. “Once upon a time I pursued an inquiry among people I know, an inquiry regarding their wants and desires in life, and when I came to look through the notes I had made I was astonished. . . . Their wants were a-job, food, a bed, a good holiday, and being left alone at work.” Mr. Whittaker sampled various brands of politics and found them wanting, but, strong individualist though life had made him, he found his nearest approach :to happiness 'as a soldier. An accident. spoilt that. career, and with damaged health he had to go back to industrial life when the depression was making it herder than ever to get work. His success, his marriage, and the blows Fate had in reserve make up the rest of this tragic story. It closes with the author still a “wage-slave” and glad of the chance of employment even of a nature that he hates, but with, hope in his heart that “somewhere there is beauty; sometime I shall find it.”

This “human document”' well repays study. It disturbs complacency; it ought to awaken thankfulness that there are no ugly industrial slums in the Dominion and that in New Zealand the craving for brighter mental and material outlook has so much greater a chance of being satisfied. “Peckover,” by J. D. Beresford. Wil. Ham Heinemann Ltd., London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth. In a foreword the author gives an assurance that the queer mental states of his principle character, Mr. Gilbert Peckover are “firmly based on established psychological data.” It is safe to say-..that not one per cent of those who read this enjoyable and amusing volume will care whether it is founded on real data or not. The luck of Mr. Peckover was certainly good, but the story is believable and always refreshing. When' a man 43 years old suffers a lapse of memory and thinks he is on leave from the trenches 15 years after the. war ended things are likely to happen. And when he meets a lady as charming and sympathetic as “Minnie Holt” his happiness seems too good to last. For his loss of memory only applies to personal matters, in his professional work he is perfectly normal and master of his job.

As partner to an architect who has won a competition for the design of a London hospital Gilbert comes in touch with some of the shadier elements in modern commerce. His attempts to deal with them as an honest man should brings about another shock, and the return of his memory in circumstances that are anything but pleasant. But Peckover’s luck holds and the story closes with brightness ahead. Indeed any other conclusion would have seemed an outrage. “Peckover is a book that can be strongly recommended for the holidays.