The Library Corner

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19437, 24 October 1925, Page 17 (Supplement)

The Library Corner

By

“Bibliophile”

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. —Bacon.

“ONE INCREASING PURPOSE.” By A. 8. M. HUTCHINSON: London, Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. A reviewer who received one of the earliest advanced copies of Mr A. S. M. Hutchinson’s new novel remarked that there would be an interminable conflict of opinion about it. “One Increasing Purpose” is very different from “If Winter Comes,” which may remain the best-read of this novelist’s works. The text of the new book is taken from Tennyson: “Yet 1 doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs.” The sentimental spirituality of the book is quite Tcnnysonian. “One Increasing Purpose” is the queer story of Major Simon Paris, his brothers, their wives and odd relations, and a preposterous sweetheart. Sometimes the theme soars to the realms of angels, and occasionally it falls into a labyrinth of introspective thought like an opium-sodden dream. To read it is an ordeal, a lure, a delight, and an acute irritation of the spirit. Those who ■were irritated by Mark Sabre will be no less exasperated by Simon Paris, who is both Simple Simon and Simon called Peter. He fought all through the World War, and emerged from it without a physical wound. Why, when so many better men were trampled down like grass by the wayside? The question puzzled him until it became an obsession. It changed him to his fellows. It changed him to himself. It made him think. And the answer came to him as a spiritual inspiration. He was spared for a purpose. That was it at last: “One increasing purpose.” In pursuit of it, like a knight of old following the mystic Gleam, Simon fared forth among the Redskins and Palefaces. They are the workers and the capitalists. Both are hopelesly wrong in their fretful and frenzied quest. Then he sought the quietude of the countryside and sojourned with the “Englands,” a rare family whose serenity and talk have never been known before in this world. They admitted him to the “K.0.H.” and the “F.0.F.” In other words, he received the Kingdom of Heaven kindness and was admitted to the Freedom of the Family. The one increasing purpose became big and glorious. It was to tell the stumbling world that religion is not an abstract thing, but “a living, human thing, divinely human, humanly divine; the spirit of the Kingdom of Heaven.” And in seeking a faith that would satisfy, Simon Paris found that “Christ is the Common Denominator, the Common Principle of every human being ...” And once every man can. sec Christ in his neighbour, “the Second Coming will have happened.” A strange book, in some respects a wonderful book. Its faults will not hinder the sale and service of its virtues. “DECLENSION.” By the Author of “A Gentleman With a Duster”: London, Messrs Mills and Boon., Popularity has its attendant dangers, and this is peculiarly the ease with book-making. If, In addition, a popular brochure is issued anonymously its vogue is all the greater. The writer who barely veils his identity under the pseudonym of “A Gentleman with a Duster,” secured the popular ear because at the psychological moment he published "The Mirrors of Downing Street.” „H<‘ spoke loudly then, and with each successive subsequent effort he has maintained a good volume of sound. In his latest booklet, called “Declension,” he is found shouting more loudly than ever: “The whole atmosphere of our cities and of our times,” he declares, “reeks of the brothel.” He sums up the situation as follows: “A low moral vitality at the top, discontent and political eonfusion below, the individual man, losing more and more his sense of gratitude for the past and responsibility for the future, no real sense of unity and brotherhood in the nation, no feeling anywhere of duty or consciousness of direction, and no enthusiasm for the greatest Empire known to the. whole historv of mankind.” The nation ir set down as composed of Rich am Poor, “everyone of whom is living either for his Brain or his Belly”; while the Rich “are leading the whole nation into the anarchy of materialism.’ Art, music, literature, are all marked by signs of sensualism and degeneracy and “in no country in Europe is the theatre fallen to so low a degree of degradation as it is in the capital city of the British Empire.” The indictment is pitched throughout in the same violent key and with overemphasised phrasing. Jeremiahs who believe that Britain is going to the demnition bow-wows, will relish the aratribe of the “Gentleman with the Duster,” fortified as it is by quotations from all and sundry. The levelheaded reader will not be slow to perceive that whatever modicum of truth tlAre be in the charge that the British Empire shows signs of decline, is destroyed by the manifest exaggeration on almost every page.

Mr John Oxenham has written a life of Christ, which may be regarded as a continuation of his “Cedar Boy,” issued last autumn. The interest which it aroused has impelled him to complete the tale of the boyhood and early manhood of Jesus.

SHORT STORIES. HR FRANK PENN-SMITH’S Collection. The collected short stories of Mr Frank Penn-Smith have been published by Chatto and Windus, London, under the queer title “Hang.” Hang is the nairic of a eat, the heroine of the first stoipq which, while it serves to delineate the peculiar and diverse temperaments of two quaiut old ladies, is by no means the best story. -Many of them have already appeared in Australian or English publications. Air Penn-Smith is an Englishman, but ho has lived in Australia, and he has a first-rate knowledge of Australian bush and life outback. One of his best tales is of Northern Queensland in a period of great drought. Reserves of water had shrunk to nothing in. river soaks and clay pans, until the whole land throbbed athirst. Death was in the air, the earth was bare, what had been pasture, now shrivelled to brittleness and broken off by the hot winds, had been fairly blown away, leaving only spiked spinifex standing among the dust and gravel. Into all this desolation the new chum plunged straight from luscious meadows ami clover pastures of an English country. He had come out to look up a cousin of his whom he had heard of as a boy —Willoughby, owner of Camden Downs, some thousands of square miles of country, bigger than a county. Rumor had said he was no longer owner. ‘Retired,” someone had jocularly said. He would find out. In his 'day-dream he could sec them welcoming him at some large, old-fashioned stone homestead. How delightful would be the wdiisky and soda, tho fruit, the dainties on the cool white table cloth. There would be ice—■ surely ice. He heard it clink in the glass. What tho now chum really found‘the reader, who has knowledge of outback Queensland in times of drought, will find pictured in anything but roseate colours. Another of the many good stories is a black pastoral accurately portraying the impossibility of bringing the Australian aboriginal from his bush haunts intocontentment in a white community. LITERARY NOTES. It is stated that James Elroy Flecker’s “Hassan” has sold about 40,000 copies since it was published. Naturally, the good run of the piece at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, helped th< book, but Flecker's dramatic work u evidently acceptable to readers. H< left another play called “Don Juan.” There is now definite news of a noy story by Air John Alascfleld. He hat decided to call tho successor to “Sard Harker” “Odtaa, or Change foi Three-pence.” It is a story of ar English boy’s adventures in the boutl American civil struggle mentioned 11 the first chapter of "Sard Harker. The author of “The Victorian Age’ has completed a small volume 01 “The Reign of King Edward Ml. * period which is likely to be regarded by the historian as a time of transitlot ■ .between the great Victorian Age am i the present epoch. The book, to b< issued shortly by Afr Murray, is brief j it makes no pretence to giving a do tailed history of the reign, but rathoi presents succinctly the chief events of its nine years and indicates the tendencies in thought and opinion by which its events were influenced.

Mr T C Tregarthcn. “the novelist of the Land’s End,” has completed a faithful account of a badger s bio, which makes as absorbing reading as manv of the romances of human life. Mr Tregarthcn hopes that Ins story will rouse a wider and deeper interest in this much misunderstood creature, and will result in a greater measure of protection being afforded it.

The latest, volume to be soon added to tho Wisdom of the East series is an “Anthology of Ancient Egyptian rooms,” compiled by C. Ehssa Sharplev. The amount of Egyptian poetry which has come down is small in comparison With the Greek and Roman literature; but, although scanty in ouantity. it is sufficient to prove harmony with the sculpture and the nms-. sivo architecture of ancient Egypt. The Egyptians worn at all times a religious people, and their hymns arc deeply touched with reverence and awe.

Mr Jacomb Hood’s comments in ths last chapter of his book, “With Brush and Pencil,” on the. work of Argustus John and Mr Jacob -P- . are unusually interesting, in viov " the controversy raging over the Hudson Memorial in Hyde lark, writes: “It is of no importance to anv but myself that L frankly own to a feeling of revulsion at the work ot Augiistus John Epstein, and their disciples and imitators. It. seems to me to be on the very outskirts of fine art. . . . Sincerity is sadly wanting, and the ‘herd instinct’ prevails. . . ■ must make allowances for l’ ri, "'" s ” my generation if we do not bow the knee to'Baal. We were studying ai d learning our trade when age, Bonnat. ami I’uvis de Lhavannet were our guiding stars. John and Epstein leave off where we were beginning.’'