ABOUT PEOPLE

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 3 February 1923, Page 5

ABOUT PEOPLE

tried on good authority that taral Richardson is to be Idministrator of Samoa. MELBOURNE, Feb. 2. wing of the Nationalist W. M. Hughes resigned, ta was elected Leader of Mr Hughes, tendering, his , said he would recommend wfieneral to commission hr the new Ministry.— A. Able. OAMARU, Feb. 2. ad enthusiastic meeting of lacpherson’s supporters was this evening. It was retiugiirate a Defence Fund tn with the election petisat rescue failed and two sd before the body was lean? of Airs S. Broekent, has taken another of pioneers. Mi’s Broekenlon Thursday at the age •s after a long period of thich was born patiently Christian fortitude. The Wy was of a quiet and ? disposition, and impres- ® whom she came in con- ® sincerity and kindliness *id in respect by all who Born in St Newban East, Brockenshire, after ft. left for New Zealand in the ship Boyne, a i Lyttelton in February, *5 then came on to Wai,J -’ here six months after ” es - The deeeased lady / interest in the Methountil her health prewas a constant atservices. Of a family L**° sons and a daughter I husband, to mourn J Rood mother, to whom y of many friends is funeral took place ■ 11 and the service was ■ Rev. W. Beckett. Ferine mansfield. Mansfield, for so Mrs Orra y was known as an * died at Fontainebleu an ■ was the third daughter I Beauchamp, of Wellingip 1913 Mr John ■ rr y, editor of the Athe , for several' years she had fcd.

With only three books, “In a German Pension,” “Bliss and Other Stories,” and “The Garden Party and Other Stories,” Miss Manefield had already made a mark in English literature, and her work had drawn the attention of foreign literary magazines of such high reputation as Le Mercure die France, La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, the Chicago Dial, and the New York Bookman, as well as feading Dutch, German, and Italian reviews. In the opinion of many English, French, and American critics. Miss Mansfield had before her, had' she been spared, an exceptionally brilliant and successful future as a novelist of the first rank. “Miss Mansfield, more than any other modern writer, leaves us wondering, ‘Am I half-blind or half-alive or what?’ ” wrote a critic in the London Tinies recently in an appreciation of Miss Mansfield’s work. “Most writers accuse us of insufficient attention as to tome things. But we can explain that easily enough. We were attending to something else, and something the writer did not mention. It is rare, indeed. for us to find a writer who includes us, who sees all that we see, and something more. Yet, up to a certain point, we must admit that Miss Mansfield is such a writer. And she sees everything much more vividly than we do. Reading her stories is like wandering at dusk through a garden we vaguely know, accompanied by a guide carrying a little searchlight. We know everything the guide points to. but we never saw it so clearly before. “It is customary to say that Miss Mansfield has been greatly influenc'd by the Russians. We see no evidence for it. Indeed, it seems to us that they are chiefly concerned with what Miss Mansfield largely neglects. Her art is of a more finite, and even domestic, order. But in Jane Austen we have a writer who may well serve ae Miss Mansfield’s ancestress, and. we may add, there is no record of the family between these two. It is a purely English as well as a purely feminine art. It is a finite art but, because it is finite, it can be made perfect. There are stories by Mies Mansfield which are not only perfect in themselves, but perfect in their genre. “Perfection is a great thing. It is not the greatest thingy and Miss Mansfield cannot be ranked among the greatest writers. But it is a quality which has peculiar claims to immortality, and we know of none among Miss Mansfield’s contemporaries whose claims are as good.”