THE CHINA · MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1058,-
The blind boy threw
his
away
white cane
-he_would 'sense' the_lamp-posts and street corners
by GEORGE MALCOLM THOMSON
FACE TO FACE.
By Vod Mehto. Collins. 161. 320
pages, MILIS
and is a brave facsinating book, the story of a young man who asks for no pity and needs none. Brought up in Lahore the large and happy in
family of a Hindu doctor in the Medical Service, Mehta has been blind since, at the
ha age of three, meningitis.
had
THE BOOK
PAGE
As he tells what followed, it is hard to believe that this is the narrative of a sightless youth;
world of darkness, but, in truth, Is blazing with light.
The differences THE ICICLE AND THE SUN. By William Sansom. Hogarth Press. 18. 159 pagos.
HAVING
02-
Finland, visited Norway, Sweden and De- his mark, Sansom jois down Impressions in this travelogue. Nobody will doubt, after reading him, that the four Scandinavian countries differ greatly from ono feeling-- another in essential and nobody will feel that San- som has probed very 'deeply into Blindness has, of course, been a chief fact in his life. "The breeze was so gentle that the differences. His essays seem But it has not been the I could even perceive the curves to ve been designed to
und slight upgrades on the couge the public to holiday in dominating fact. After street. There were sounds the North. Sansem is talented spending his boyhood in of For) inators, Chevrolets, and enough to succeed in that pur. India, Mehta went to a I even remember hearing a few pose and to write a less super
I skirted one feial book than this one. school for the blind in Bulek engines.
lamp-post by a hair's breadth, Arkansas.
Mixed mission And another actually caught my shoulder.. There were number of ways of telling when VANISHED CITIES. By
Hermann you go to the street corner, the
and Georg noise of the traffic, the draught Schreiber. Weldenfold and of air, etc."
Nicolson, 25s. 344 pagos.
Dormant sense No portion of his auto- blography is more gripping than that in which he describes how the faculty of "facial vision," dormant in all of us, can be trained,
Was
a
Coming back, he humbed a
| POCKET CARTOON
by OSBERT LANCASTER
31989
"and in 1938, my dear, For resolved to be not just angry but positively livià !?!
BOOKS IN BRIEF
"TED' LEWIS HAS A NOSE FOR A HIT DISC
RECORDS by PETER BUCHAN
TAR away across the rooftops and the Thames the FAR
records shops of the West End were busy. Even at 10 am, the booths where customers laten were occupied and the half-heard mixture of akifle and classics soaked the air.
It may be that his staff treat the remark moru ag on order then a prophecy. In any event Lewis is usually right.
Lewis in enthusiastic about
new process, called stereophonic sound.
At present this process which works through two loud-speakers and gives an in-
credible feeling that th chestra or singer la actually in front of the stenar.is donu
Lewis's engbeers at Decca have worked out a maihod of
*MR. RECORD · BUSINESS.**
But here, in Brixton, whore "But when things are not se muslly on magnetic tapes, Almost half the records sold in good ..well, the blues came played through equipment cost- Britain originate, the office was in during the depression years, ing up to £300, quiet.
Nobody wanted to be slapped on the back then." Over a cluttered desk, Edward Roberts Lewis, 67-year-old I was during the depression getting the same result from a stockbroker, chairman of Decco, of the thirties that Lewis disc. and the mon known almost into the record business. As-a. On a stereophonic dize the
Record stockbroker he had floated roverentially as "Mr Business" to
em- new Decca isque. Within southseedle wilt weave from side to people will have to buy sida of the groove (as it does equipment to play them." ployees and his competitors, was the shares were almost value on present records) and it will Lowla expects
also move up and down, The stereophonic discs to be on sale
movements of the in about a year. separate
sounds in needle will "hear"
a pair of the same way as human cars.
both hla
chain smoking his cigarettes less. corning from a. large, green leather box, his light from an elegant gold fighter.
moves
If success brought a hangover, ""Ted" Lowls should have begun LOVE RIDES TO DUTIER- | the New Year scared to MERE, by Philip Lindsay. his head.
Ten weeks ago, Decca issue Today it is Jayne Mansfeld.
sung by Harry Belafonte. Since In the first years of the nine-a dise called Mary's Boy Child, teenth century it was the milit
anned Mary Robinson. As the then It has sold 1,200,000 Beauty of Buttermere, this corda.
a Loke District daughter of
Sald Lewis: "It should never won publican
praise from have
дѣ sold all by normal Wordsworth, De Quincer, and rules. People who buy records other connoisseurs.
nowadays don't seem to want a Her vital statistics were dis- lot on á record any more. The cussed in verse and prose. But normal is about two and a half Mary would not marry until the minutes. This onc runs fur dashing Colonel Hope, brother fearr minutes and fifty seconds. of Earl Hopetoun, came along. But I don't know of any record
Their honeymoon was idyllic, that has sold so fast." except for one thing. The bride-
the Phenomenal ne it was, Zim-groom was quickly unmasked as
an impostor named Hadfield sales figure of Mary's Boy Chita and hanged for forgery nt was just the lost crashing chord
an astonishing year Carlisle.
Author Lindsay (who died records. earlier this month) has turned Mary's tale Marae noch (Hutchinson, 255)
writers col- Iaborate in a discursive BC-
ancient count of many
cities ranging from Bodom to bubwe.
ft from a lady who thought he WG Viennese
He could not was half-blind. convince her that blind people have no "extra senses." Her scepticism is easy to understand
Their book suffers from divid- Mchia's autobiography is not ed purpose; it is partly a record (or near-modern) confined to his personal strug of modern gle. Tense pages tell how his archaeological Ands, partly family had to flee from Lahore, description, rather florid In the Moslem part of India, style, of ancient cllies as they when Independence came-and once were. The final impression Partition with it.
left is colourful rather than solid. Thin fare for the devotces of popular archaeology.
In the school gymnasium there
un obstacle Slabs of all sizes course. and weights hung from the ceiling in constant rotation. Blind students were asked to walk through the
as they Suddenly, Hindu labyrinth as fast could, without bumping into which had been living peace- fully among thele neighbours the obstacles, which they for decades were threatened learned to sense by pres- with murder, rape and arsen. sure on the skin above the
In a half-hearted way, Mehta enry.
tries to blame these horrors on
familles
the British and their diabolical
policy
Mehta found it fairly
of "Divide and rule." easy. He was used to riding. They had favoured the Hindus his bicycle in empty streets over the Moslems and simul- taneously preferred the Moslems at home.
to the Hochis!
T
One day, he was told to go to town by trolleybus, make a few purchases in a drie-store and then meet his instructor for milk-chake. At the start of the Journey he throw away his white cano because it made him self- conscious.
But it is not likely that this
story still carries conviction
to
No strain
I WALK ON WHEELS, by Elizabeth Sheppard-Jones.
to
for
tain in 1957 will be around
year shood.
1
Lewis had no legal responsi- bility to Decco, but stepped in to guide the company. He has been doing it ever since.
MORE EXPENSIVE
"But,"
the
the
first
Lewis talks easily about the record business. About himacit he shy and monosyllabic. I tried asking him personal questions. Lewis ducked them
People who work with Lewis -and even his rivals in the recording business credit him with an uncanny insight into what is likely to be a record hit.
He has been known to say be more expensive. No, not Lewis smiled: "If I had been after one hearing of a new record: "This will be a hit.”
Paya Lewis, "it is all
Finally, I asked: "Did you, or ut going to cause the revolution For one thing, the records will music? that long-playing records did. do you, know anything about
ahine,
twice as much as present ones, a musician there but certainly dearer. And, thon, been no Decca,"
Where shall we go? ROBERT GLENTON reports. from Europe's 'Serenade, City'
would havo
Roman road to music
and madness-
I said
KONÆRE
The counting-house and London us
"When we want to show DOMŊ» Home is a place for a honey-
fourth honeymoon.
roble Roman laughed and said: sedate as tea and toast. thing really special, we always moon second, a third, or a
call it green milce."
Lewis estimates that the final TT Rome, and the brisk
ngures of records sold in Bri-was walls of the city 80,000,000 with all better glowed red-gold in the sun
We got into an Alfa Romeo We stood at the top of "Already," he says, "the N-
No matter what your age it is and roared through the streets. dications are that it will be the Spanish Steps, looking and came to a restaurant. The almost ostentatious not to hold our best month yet.
bands across down on the flower stalls green mice, when all the fuss of
the dinner table SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, Elizabeth and
One wartime Sunday in June
...that is if you leave the Pauline found "What the year will bring where the yellow bobbles of reeling from the restaurateur
gilded be
tourist had faded, turned out t
spots where MASTER OF COURAGE. themselves in London
the general pros-mimoon seeped a fragrance roast wild boar with chocolate with depends on
immaculate gigolos sigh OVEC By Princess Bibesco. Hala, |nothing to do. They decided to perity of the notion. If that into the air.
purtly jewel-sparking trippers. 15s. 192 pages.
go to church. An hour later | goes down, one of the first Pauline was dead, her friend things to g
On a with it wi
soft Roman evening, VERY French and very Elizabeth paralysed for life. records."
when the crumbling Colosseum the feminine, this is a view of The service they had chosen the greatest living English-was the one held in the core the record business reflects ille Lowis also believes that while
broads of past agonies in moonlight, it is time to seek restaurant like the man from an unusual angle. Itat Wellington Barracks--the one
Carrettiere.
De
is emotional,- foesippy and Interrupted by a Garman flying state of the country, the state uncritical. It imposes tie strain bomb, Now Elizabeth tells the of the country is reflected in on the reader's concentration, story of the 14 years since then the type of records sold. the agreeable, brave and civil. He is carried forward, hardly-years spent in learning 1sed
Indian now young
noticing the motion, on an easy, enjoy ilfe to the full in Baillol who has written so perfumed tide of reminiscence electric wheel chair. The result markable an account of his life
and rhetoric.
is an intensely moving book in what might have been
(Bler. 15s.)
a
an
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
VALENTINES
-London Express Service),
THE CUPID'S ARROW THAT BACKFIRED
"HAPPY VALENTINE
BAGER BEAVER
CUPID ON THE WARPATH.
"Now," said the noble Roman beside me, "I will shaw you
soft against an evening sity. 1 some green mice."
I had seen the hills of Home seen the shepherds will the Hocks among the green trees The Pope had blessed me,
hundred
sauce.
OSTENTATIOUS
If that sounds gruesome, then you should try it. But laste it first in Home, where
the chef
watches your face with all the anxiety of a schoolboy hoping his homework has pleased.
Rome is a mad city. Ranked with the capitals of Europe is
10 He says: "When times are had been smiled on by lovely
the demand is for gay, giris good
end hear cheerful music. That's what we serenades. are getting now. It's like ¿ I didn't particularly want to tiny, but is happiness makes hearty slop on the back.
see any green mice.
Parla seem like a rather weary
Cupid Stuff
PERFUME CUPID'S SECRET WEAPON
"COPR.-1999 ST GONEAL PLATUNKE
GAME THE WORLD BITTE ASSEKTIO
By Harry Weinert
"HMM-THAT TIGHTWAD' BIT PROVES THAT IT'S SOMEONE CLOSE
TO YOU!
"DON'T LOOK AT ME / YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IF
A GIRL
SENT IT?".
PERSONALLY,
I THINK IT'S
A GROUP EFFORT.
THE CASE OF THE UNSIGNED VALENTINE.
FOR LOVESICK CASES
WE RECOMMEND
A GET-WELL VALEATIAE.
* AND LAY OFF THAT. DAN CUPID
STUFF /*
ALL THE WORLD LOVES A LOVER-
GO THEY SAY,
Chocco
SARANOIDS
This is a place the Italiana love, where a meal can last ave ours, and the laughter and the singing make it scen tive minutes.
You can hear the guitars long before you reach the tiny door- way. The tables are crowded together. This has the great virtue that one сад
rub shoulders with more lovely giris then а 4lm producer ever thought of
Artichokes and tender greets Dens are good 10 start with But make them last, for it will be a long time before the waiter comes round again. It is almost impossibio to catch his dreamy eye as he leans against the doos- post with his colleagues and istens to the songs..
Then Glullo will come and sing to you. He is a romantiu gold-toothed tenor and he is es passionate as a tropic night.
GRAND PRIX TOUCH
It is hard to get to bed in Romo, But as every Italian who has a car looks upon the early morning streets as a grand. prix circuit, it is much easier to get up.
And if you are tired of the city the seashore is only minutes Hway.
Ostia la just 15 miles
from the centre of Rome.
And al Ostin or any of the other nearby ausside places you est swim and eat octopus and scampi in the sun.
With Italian wine, of course. Home can give you palaces and fountains, seaside, and [dreamy days in the hills beyond
the city.
I else has a health service. In a tiny tile monastery in the heart of the city the monks take toeth out for nothing. I couldn't And anyone who had taken advantage of this facility, how-
aver,
The
ungrateful citizens suspect it is all done by faith----- and no anaesthetic.
WAND THE COST?
But Bome, a bilseful’mamar's night and music make aftroney- moon of a holiday......
What does a holiday in Rome cost?
In a fat-class holek, just over 21 to alightly under. Ea a day for two people. A second-class hotel' or 'first-class · boarding-- house corts up to 30s, a day for two..
A private, bath in Rome means adding something like 10a, a day to your bill, w
These are the prices for ocommodation only. Arpom and Billboard costa from £110#, 103, 10-23 108, a band. Hemember, in Rome there; is a. service charge. "of 10-20 per cent on your: Dál