10
BOOKS
KATHARINE MANSFIELD'S
PORMS.
There is a whimsical "charm about many of these poems com- parable with the best things which Katharine Mansfield wrote. The tenderness peeping forth, often to be almost fiercely suppressed, lest the poignant vision of the realist be in any degree abandoned to sentimentality, is given freer rein in her poetry than in her prose.
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Byron and Shelley, Browning and Matthew Arnold could write nobly and satisfyingly in prose, but there are things, which two of them certainly would not have said at all had they not said them in verse, things which were no
rupture of a bird's song, which Stevenson could only have said in verse.
part of Carlyle's experience. Few have understood better than did Robert Louis Stevenson how to deserike adventures of all kinds in his essays, and yet there were come adventures, flashes. of in- In "The Doll's House" and inspiration, like the sudden exalted 'some other of her stories she re- vealed with what remarkable delicacy and feeling she could understand the heart of the child, whether descending, intu the valley or climbing the mountain top of experience. iter pictures Bo vivid, unlaboured. with such unexpected dashes of inspiration, touched in us chords of memory perhaps long forgotten, he had that exquisite gitt of writing of children, not with a grown-up! imagination and judgment, but with the understanding of just what it feels like to live in a world full of strange restrictions and glorious possibilities, where small things are apt to be so hugely im- portant, and big things so entirely insignificant.
Such intensity of perception and such rapture of feeling can, with the poet, only express itself in that form of rhythmic melody which calls itself poetry. And thus it was, because of the poet in her, with Katharine Mansfield. Sne confessed: "I feel always trembling on the brink of poetry." We know that often for years she wrote no poetry while the stories with which, we are familiar appeared instead, revealing, in numberless touches, the poet. Then moments came, when, with wings spread, the poet soared into an ecstasy of self-expression. Here, indeed, is no "trembling on Before we had read any of her the brink"; each line carries us poetry, we could imagine how forward in glad wonder to the naturally and joyously Katharine next, and we find ourselves mus- Alansfield might break into verse; ing, as with all the loveliest things those things which made it so that we have known, whether it natural for her to think and feel is its beauty or its inevitability with the child would respond to a which delights us most.. mode of self-expression, spontan-
and unconventional.
equs
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Carlyle, among the greatest of prosewriters, 'regarded verse with something akin to scorn. Many of the finest poenas, truly, might have been said as well in prose.
lovely, but the methods, uniquely hers, of sharing with others the fruits of her adventuree,
THE CHINA MAIL.
I
'GROWING BOOKS...
BITES. FROM, BOOKS,
The man who wants above
everything to be a lord mayor before he dies often becomes a lord mayor that is his punish ment.
SATURDAY MAROE - 8 1984.
NOTES. M
cal literature. Artistically bound and printed to suit the eye, these
pocket. The alitor, Mr. Bennett, cheap and dainty volumes can be conveniently slipped into the has an entertaining and instruc tive biographical introduction for cách edition i
-Good books are living things. As we slowly turn the pages of know this is true because I have
ready immediately The Lion's Messrs. Stanley Paul will have this book and then turn back to seen some grow.. A few in parti
Skin," and "The Justice of the the beginning again, stopping cular. come to mind because they
Duke" by Rafael Sabatinil. In the here and there to fall in with and I grew up together. "Water some dancing rhythm or catch Babies," for instance; that was a
special uniform edition at 3/0 hot again some tender tifting melody, young book when I was a little. The only human beings which Sabatini's novels.
which they are issuing of Mr. we seem to see what, it was in bby. It told a simple story in a men don't want to civilise, and Skin' deals with London of the Kathrine Mansfield which made childlike way. Then it kept got women can't, are women them-time of George I when the poun-ary triumphs. Spencer with his her understand nature as un-ting more between its covers as selves. erringly as she understood child-
try was still quivering under the wo grew older. Now it has be hood. It was her love, for them which made it so immeasurably
come very wise book indeed.
shock it had sustained from the “I don't see,” said Mrs. Mary Lursting of the South Sea Bubble. "At the Back of the North Wind"" worth while to look into the heart behaved in the same way, I sup. Ann Hicks to the old lawyer whoThe Justice of the Duke" deals of Loth and seek, not merely to pote some cynic will claim that was making her will, "why with Cesare Borgia and is of high describe, but to explain them to us and to herself. As an example, the time. But 1 know better as if the dear departed had gone this wisdom was in the book a funeral should always be dressed let us quote, in full, one of her Indeed, there are many books that to Hell." poems, "Voices or the Air" not quite outgrow the men who wrote included among the Child-Verses, them and get to have much more and yet, surely, belonging to
them:
But then there comes that moment
rare
When, for no cause that I can
find,
The little voices of the dir Sound above all the sea and wind.
The sea and wind, do then obey And sighing, sighing double notes Of double basses, content to play A droning chord for the "little
throats
The little throats that sing and
rise
Up into the light with lovely eune And a kind of magical sweet sur-
prise
To hear and know themselves for
these→→
For these little voices: the be,
the fly,
The leat that taps,, the pad that
breaks.
The breeze on the grass-tops
bending, by,
The shrill, quick sound that the
insect makes.
Lightly and surely she touches the little things which often appear commonplace and dull, and we see them flashing in the sun, To have understood so much was Katharine lanatield's are gift, Not that all the poems, reach this high level of sheer inspiral to have loved even more pro tion in farm and feeling. Some foundly than she understood, this of them, indeed, can hardly be
was the greatest gilt of all, called poetry at all, and yet they
-E. F. II. have their place here, revealing [Pcems. By Katharine Mans- not only the poet's vision and com- field. prehension of things rare and
London: Constable.
net.],
hood without several good books to grow up with.
4
gress.
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When we despise a
man for
This new series covers quite a wide ground. Here you will find ture as well as quite recent liter- "The Lion's masterpieces of old English litera
with his dramas of nature," and pooms of romance, Shakespeare Milton with his odes of morality. care. This library comes as a are all produced with the greatest
time when they, are most wel boom to all book-lovers and at a
historic value by virtue of the accurate and graphic pictures it shows of a ruthless man in a ruth-
come,
→Humordo.
[The Carlton Classen 2/- and 3/, John Long, Ltd.]
Wo are far more particular | lesu are. in them than thoir authors ever put there? I think that this has about what we put into our happened to many of Shakes to our minds. That is why we
stomachs than the food we give "Damned" is the title of a very peare's plays and I am sure it is hear no complaint about the fall shortly by Mesars, Stanley Paul. unusual novel to be published true of several books of the Bible. ing-off in attendance at restau- it is the strange story in life and FOLLOWERS OF THE SEA.
To have spent a childhood with- out play fellows is a serious handi- rants or the fact that a theatre death of Dolores Trent, young, beautiful, and the plaything of cup for anyone to overcome; but bur never spells ruin even when a it is not mich worse than a child. Shakespearean festival is in pro-Fate. In writing it the author- dozen sea comedies from the This volume consists of half a whose name, the publishers ars jovial pen of Morley Roberts. not at liberty to divulge at present The heroine of The Seventeenth has endeavoured to point the Duchess of Briston" was a tabby
cat whose seafaring owner expect ed great things, from her fatal beauty."
As for the Jee premier, his name was Java Tom, and he was "striped like a Bengal tiger." The scene of the drama, the skipper's back garden, was covered by rabbit wire, intended George Bronson-Howard's ex-to keep all other cats away until "The Devil's Chaplain" will be returned to his home. published at once by the same yarn, had a vision of cats that Bill Mason, who spine this epic firm. In this story Yorke Norroy, night after his work in the garden a secret agent, and one of the was complete which can be ex- most popular characters the pressed only in his own language: guthor has ever created, comes "A cloud came off of the moon,
I may not guess aright any of your boy friends, but if you num- bered among them Tom Sawyer or Tom Canty, Jin Hawkins' or David Balfour, or such older com- panions as John Rid or Amyas Leigh, I'll wager they are almost as real to you now in recollection
being a self-advertiser it only way to a better understanding of means that he's advertising him- life. The world's film rights of self by a big drum, and so far, the novel have been sold, and a we, ourselves, have only been able big picture is in course of pro- to draw attention to our existence duction for release early this
by tinkling on a tambourine..
"Folded Hunds." By Richard
year,
||
as the lad who lived in the next King. (Holder & Stoughton, 65.) citing novel of the underworld— Java Tom, who had escaped,
block..
We speak of knowing Dickens or Browning or Stevenson or the modern Russians, and we mean
only that we have read them. Yet on second thought. I think we mean just what we say..
The point of all this palaver is atrite one, to be sure, but it My little library is peopled by my needs re-saying now and then books. Am I bringing together into the cozy space as broadening, as satisfying, as cosmopolitan a fellowship as I could wish.?
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An Unbearable. Bull.' Father Healy, and heard stories We dined one evening with only one of which remains in my memory. It was by way of illustrating an Irish bull. Irishmen were walking together into a pit. The other peered down in the dark, when one of them fell it and cried in agony: "Och, Pat, tell me if you're kilt entirely!" "No," was the reply; "I'm not kilt, but I'm spacheless!"
"Reminiscences," By A.H. Sayce, (Macmillan.)
W
It is as true as gospel that Mark Twain and Stevenson and Charles Lamb and Ben Jonson sought and still seek my friendship. Some- thing of themselves, undoubtedly, they gave to corporeal friends exchange for the friendship of and other relations in their years readers yet to be. It is for me to of early pilgrimage. But ninety-accept or reject. nine per cent. of themselves, as
14s.
they pored over their writing,
Burges Johnson, they were forever offering in in "As I Was Saying."
into conflict with the formidable Crime Trust," and then, things happen!
*
and I seen cats in single file hadvancin' on the walls,
They was black and white, and white with spots, and white without, and The demand for "Flaming as a guinea and with em-blue tabby, and tortoiseshell, and yaller Youth" by Warner Fabian-one Persians and hall the haristocracy of the best selling novels in of cats mixed with the lowest America, and published in Eng: And as they come along and is still on the increase, and they lifts up their voices a new edition is at press.
and yells unanimous as. 38 wishful to let the Duchess know they was comin' and 'urgin' of ter to make no ch'ice till, they 'ad a look in." And into that felloe. maelstrom sprang suddenly the broken, but the Duchess was saved. warrior, Java Tom. The wife was
London; Nash and Gragson,
CARLTON CLASSICS,
In the Carlton Classics recently published by Messrs. John Long, Ltd. one gets the cream of classi-7.6d net.
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"CAN A WOMAN LOVE TWICE?"
Scene from
'CLEAN UP UNIVERSALATTRACTION
BURNING WORDS."
"Burning Words,” the Universal photoplay in which Roy Stewart is starred, which had its first local showing at the World Theatre to-day, is 'n dramatic tale of the Canadian borderland, and the activities of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
Of great interest to every one of us who over married or thought of marriage (and who hasn't thought of marringe?"), "Can, a Woman Love Twice is the photoplay starring Ethel Clayton, which comes to the World Theatre BOON, For, while the picture as: The story centres around the a whole is a dramatic treatment life of David Darby, a "Mounty" of a theme that finds a universal response, the women folks of former soldiers will have 'especial opportunity to indulge in the favourite feminino pastime of what might have been, Inas much as the story concerns a girl wife, and mother whose husband is killed in France.
for seven years and an honour to the service, and that of his younger brother, Ross, an irres ponsible youth whose advent into the service, through his brother's influence fails to raise him above the wild and dissolute nuture that, eventually ruins his life
Through a weakness for gam The battle scenen themselves, bling and drinking Ross finally while realistically thrilling and becomes indebted to "Slip" Mar- atirring, merely form incidental tin, a saloon and dance, hall pro- backgrounds to establish the prietor and when he is ordered to heroic death of the girl's hus make good the LO.U.'s that he has, i band. Forced upon her own reincurred, gets into a row with sources after the birth of her son, Martin and kills him. T the young woman is flung by In the prison acone following circumstances into the role of a cabaret entertainer. Then, for the future of her baby, she is led to practise a great deception-she Passes herself off as the wife of a man whom his father in Call fornia believes to be dead Dramatic aurprises come thick and fast, especially after the deadman_returns to find a woman he doesn't even know posing as his widow. How glave to the woman forms one of gigantic explosion reuniten the biggest climaxes ever brought father and son and bruge second to the screen
the court martial of Ross, just before he is to be turned over to the civil authorities for execution, Stewart, who has the role of David, and Harold Goodwin in the role of Roas, demonstrate their dramatic ability with remnost. human portrayal as the youngor. brother breaks down and begs the forgiveness of his big brother
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A Blazing Drama of the Rugged North-West
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