Marquand melts
on
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1959.
ROBERT PITMAN'S BOOK PAGE
On Broadway The strange case of a Judge
WOMEN AND THOMAS HARROW. By John'P. Morquand.
Collins, 161.
THE
►
HE theatre, as a subject seems to have a "Tenstrously sentimental effect on most novelists, 19
it has had, in this case, on Mr Marquand.
His study
snd of the fe Joven of a succesful Broadway dramatist is mashy and squashy. The famous Marquand eny which alted his earlier novels has vanized without trave.
In it stead there is a "when atent humaur which he even crept into the headings te how put above each chapter-head- ings the "After all, he enuldn't take it with him."
a barrel change Falls." Ugh!
Going back
This disaster
prompts him to turn over lanumerable memories from his not very eventful lite,
theatrical le rentember night and bridet nest nights, thentries squabbles and marital squablilts.
Above all, he remembers lus the rmell- rst wife hono, town piri he married just before his brit success, and wine, even interested in mere "Don't Ben, was en Niagara what he made then in what he did, nad left him for a sounder proposition.
ur
1
GRIEF COSTS HIM ONE FAME
AND GIVES HIM ANOTHER
I DROVE past Wormwood Scrubs into the wilderness of railway lines and grey slate roofs which Londoners call Willesden. There in a drab, chill public hall I ended my quest for one of Britain's most successful authors.
Henry
coat of
at
On the nufher's head was n It was the case & Judge Leon thick meux-coloured wi, himself, Above, it, the royal
Here was the dossier arms hung from a water pipe. In barely ten years, under the An unusual setting for an ren-nuine of Henry Cgell, Judge At the end of this lung leek author. But then this was at Leon had produced a revolution mest Thomas bucks he comes to the conclusion ugual author. He was His in the book world, He has When we fit Harrow it i the epiten Dust he has been bad at mang- Honour Judge
¿TY
Ceet virtually ousted the doctor as zod women, and is Leon, Smoothly, he was presid- the ready-made hero of popular hes fhioned ing life period house he for tinsoir and is unapprecia- perhaps only a mediocre play- înt over the pageant of debtors Diction In place of medicine
it the New wright after all (which by now and Rent Act claimants Sive tbd wife
Henry Cecil has firmly put the we are quite reatly to believe. Willesden County Court. England town he was brought
law. And he almost--but not quite-- up 1.
Around me
ing and television Leon 011 the court's He is going back to his rots drives himself over a clit.
and wooden benches It is all rather trie
folle has also stumped his mark, His tense His career bad been
bi:1
their Mr shuted since
the best-seller BROTHERS IN LAW fect in nabreken Auvers and vesselers whimsical:
Nervous, deout, ke Michael Joseph, 10s. ad.) did Statlery ever since his first play Marqand knows as much about cata, an a young man had sun for two writing novels as anyone in the starlets before an audition, they well at the box office, His Now suddenly he has business, it is fully organised waited for the cases in which mystery novel NO BAIL FOR years.
they were Involved,
THE JUDGE (new edition April staked oil his life savings on and compulsively rozdable. musical bout The Thren
-13%. Od.) which has brought
for Alm Hitchcock ning Musketeers, and has lost the l
atmosphere in London, will do even better,
one
of
By RICHARD LISTER (London Express Service).
But the ease that Interested ne was different from the real.
HERE'S A SCROUNGER
THE UNSPEAKABLE SKIP.
TON, By Pamela Hansford
Johnson. Macmillan. 15s.
TRUE comedy — as
TRU
op-
posed to the merely funny--always has, it has itu been said, a sadness at core. If this is so. Miss Hansford Johnson has, in this study of an artist with a split personality, written a true comedy.
2172
a
Her Daniel Skipton is bared
real-life
character, Frederick Rolfe, who called bim vlf Binon Cervo, and Jr. Heyed himself a pouium.
Padel Skipton, is in one side of his punonality, a wholly dedicated writer content only with absolute perfection in his eralt, and who would sacrice anything his health, his Hie even, to get just one centence exactly right,
YOU'LL PITY
by
Richard Lister
must live in his beloved Bruges, city of carrillons and canals, and In order to scrape along there, even in shabby
paverly, he is propared to windle, cheat, borrow from, or even pirap for. any suckers who come his way
But is all done with such a Pih and mighty air, and al abcot to his inordinale pride that we and ourselves reming and pitying more than despicing hin
Ani Mits Hansford Johnson's
Whumph Is to encage our Sy 101 this Impossible man, without even the slightest The reverse side of his perfec- attempt to whitewash him. tionism a
artist is hin 1- vietins are some tourists unsetujadongress as a man. He to the city, a highly intense
lady dramatist and her fourage.
en-
They are marked down, pur wed. studied and then sy tematically touel:ed" for small Icons, cdd meals, and in one of the funnier scenes in the book, the commission for a visit to a brothel.
ove
Skipton determines to make them pay also for the humilia-
has suffered tions he them, and allows himself, on of their last day, the luxury
exactly telling them i publie what he thinks of them,
For note that novels intrigu Ing theme. Its hero is a judge who gets stunned in a treat accident and wakes up in a 100m he has never seen before, Unfortunately for the judge the room's owner is not only prostitute, but also happens to be lying murdered.
Some reviewers called the plot far-fetched.
How, they asked, could a judge get into a scrape But the truth is that four of even the most innocent sort of trouble obscases Leon. A barris- ter friend told me: "He's no tectotpler. But now he's a judge he refuses to go inside a púb because of the mere chance of fame Nght or argument break. ang out."
A BRISK BOOK
Leon has not confined him-
It is a fatal mistake which coals him every single frane he ins managed to squeeze out of self to funny books and thrillers autumn he Published them, and leave him as poverty-st
BRIEF TO COUNSEL (12:, Od.). stricken when they arrived,
It had a preface by Mr Justice Skipton's story, at once
Devin, it was 'n Grisk book of idiculous and sad, is told with
instruction for apprentice barziz. immense high spirits, with con- siderable Ingénuty in the plotting, and with a delightful feeling for its Belgian selling.
-(Londen Express Service).
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
THE HANDLERS' JOB IN THE RING
IS TO POSE THEM
WHEN THEY'RE TOO
LAZY TO POSE
THEMSELVES.
LOOKING DOWN HIS NOSE AT MERE HUMANS IS THE ONE WHOSE PEDIGREE GOES BACK, SIX THOUSAND YEARS.
ALWAYS
A
iers.
Sample; "Few members of the public know what a leading question is, and a substantial
The lawyers trample on the doctors
number of legal practitioners have an incorrect notion of its meaning. You often hear people dimcult. questions ra ordinary conversation by call-
'them ing.
wrongly quile --leading questions,
Parry
SNAPPED UP
Are you going to marry the gir!??
"Alt, that's a leading ques-
tion."
"Well, it isn't."
Leon explains that a leading question is one which puts the evidence inlu the witness's mouth. He gives these instanços:--
Was your marriage a happy olte? No.
Was that because your hu band beat pou?—Yes.
If you asked him where he had been did he hit you? Yes,
Hurd? Yes. Comments Leon: "Evidence obtained in that Way is ob- viously unsatisfactory."
OW SHOWING
THIS IS THE LAW
LAST FEW DAYS
DOCTOR IN LOVE
It is as if Richard Gordon managed to make a popular hit with a text-book on discases of the respiratory tract,
that Lite wonder
Henry Crell's publishers (who refuse to breathe the accret name of Leon) are happy about the prospects of his new novel, SETTLED OUT OF COURT, in which excitements and legal
mixed arc
in squal points
Joseph, (Michael 13s. Gd-to be published on March 10),
measure
What is the explanation of Leon's rapid emergence as an author?
DETERMINED
Already,
to
before coming Willesden, 1 had discovered something about him which is more dramatic than anything in his novels.
In the Temple I talked to his friends among the barristers and barristers clerks. One of them sald:
Brief to Counsel, you see, was not irected et the general "It surprised all of us whiên render. But the general reader Leon gave up his practice and has snapped i up. Since become a County Court judge September It has been reprinted in 1040. You so, he had his three times.
feet near the top rung then,
The Dog Show
ཉྭ་
"MY! WHAT A SAD LOOKING NUMBER?” SAYS THE BLOODHOUND.
COPE, 1957 BY GENERAL FEATURES
COAT, IMWORLD RIGHTS RESERVED.
GENTLEMAN
-EXCEPT
WITH CATS.
WONIRT
2-17
WALKING THE FLOOR WITH IT" AFTER THE EXCITEMENT
OF BEING
PARADED BEFORE
A LOT OF
STARING PEOPLE.
Martin
But how has he found tho fuspiration In the neld atino- sphere of "petty elvil clalms which filla a county couri7
In that draughty hall in Willesden I watched Leon dia- pousing Justice. He won kinu and courteous. Chairs were brought forward or every wit- ners, The defendants might have been Judge Leon's personal questa.
Then a remarkable processing entered the court. An old man, bent most double, was led forward, ite was Lind, luz, dient. His age was 82.
Eloquently
the old 17100**
counsel explained why, under the Rent Act, he should bo allowed to stay on in his He had Golders Green flat only his old-age persion and a small private Income. His son, who looked after him, had been out of work because of bad health.
SO COURTEOUS
But the judge surprised me: He did not seem so sympathello as I had expceled, in the wit- ness-box the old man's non fold how the flat hed a cerüßente of disrepair: how the floor-boord: were rotting and the walls ran with damp.
"He was only 17 and he was carning £7,000 a year.
But the judge was not moved, But A
"How does VONT county court judgeship is an He asked: absolute dead end, You don't father act his private income? often become a High Court What is his capiat? judge after that, you know."
Why then did Henry Cecil
make that con
unexpected change? For XL
wonderful reason.
In the Temple I learned how Leon the brilliant and busy barrister was fold that his wife had only a few years to live. He was devoted her He was determined to spend hours with her every remaining day-something he could not possibly do while he depended of a busy practice.
So he gave up all his pro- fessional bapes and took up un obscure judgeship at a sacrifice
of thousands a year.
ALMOST
GUESTS
No sooner had Leon made this sacrifice than his wife died.
Already; while nursing her, Loan had tried writing s. boat. Now, desolafe, be put all his wasted entrey and brilliance Into authorship.
BY HARRY WEINERT
SOMEONE HAS TO STICK AROUND WITH THE LITTLE ONES-HALF AN HOUR
WITHOUT COMPANY-
AND THEY
BURST OUT CRYING.
THERE ARE BOUND TO BE SOME SQAWKS
IN THE BATTLE FOR THE ROSETTES.
WE ALWAYS
EXPECT
THE POODLE
-TO SAY
"CHAMPAGNE
AND CAVIAR)
TOOT SWEET !"
At first the son said he did not know. But at last some of
the farts come out. The pathetic cld man Hid at least £8,000 invested plus factory premises which he let at £250 a year.
Judge Legn became la courteous self once more. But there was a glint of fun behind his spectacles. And I could see why.
For think what a picture bad been conjured up. Think of the bent old man and his son living In their damp, delopidated flat with share cerilicates for £9,000 and the deeds of a factory tucked away in a drawer.
Ten minutes in a county court had produced material worthy of Dickens, let alone of the genial and talented Henry Cecil.
Is there a colour bar -in books?-
W colour-bar was
7OULD you say that a
exer-
cised by intellectual people in Britain?
Just the reverse, you might reply. Why, there are intellectuals who will let Dr Nkrumah get away with the
kind of
oppression which would set them seething it i Gecurred in South Africa
Yet here is an. cdd thing. Recently a novel called THE HIT, iry Negro author Mayfield, was publhired (Michzel Joseph, 13s. ed.).
Juli
It is the story of a middle- aged Harlem Negro whose whole life a bulit around the dream of making big win in the betting system which New York calls "the Numbers Gome."
The man's Negro neighbours, his tough wife, his armorous son, are described not as comles not ng oppressed heroes but as ordinary people with ordinary pasalons. The result is a tento And interesting novel,
Kightly it has earned excel- int reviews In the newspapers and intellectual magazinės. But hardly anyone has bothered to buy it.
Why? The publishera say: "Oh you can nover sell 蕭 Normo, novel in Britain now- ndays."
I urge
China Mull readers
who enjoy a well-fold tale to
prove them wrong.
VIVID
RAPE OF THE FAIR COUNTRY, by Alexander Cordell: This novel about the rugged Justy Mortymers- & family of workers in the South Wales Ironields 120 yooraloge— Las been compared with Crat pre-war best-seller How Green Was My Voltep, i would rato it higher. Its writing has much. fre that it hardly reads like history Betion at all..
It brings to vivid life.all thora bleak illustrations of misery among the nineteetah-century | poor that are found a tho history books. It pulses with pathos and laughter. According to the mnibusbars, Aneurin Bevan recommends it. So do In (Gollancz, 76x)
-London Exprean · Harviop),