1924-12-27 — Page 14

14:

BOOKS

STEAMERS.

THE CHINA MAIL..

"THE STUDIO."

barring of coconut palms or a grating of ice. Be sure that she will put on airs once she has drop- AN AID TO ART APPRECIA

*TION.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER ZZ KL20

but no fall should involve, ar un pondent to the Daily Chronicle comprehending ' pain like this. This is the first authoritative There is moonlight and sunlight,

Instinctively, we feel that it is too account of the German S much, that some eternal law. has. System, a subject around, whichi there are stars and the sea. Some ped behind her betters, and will

been violated, that the very nature all kinds of extravaging stories days are gray and ribbed with the go swelling into little empty har

of things has received a shock have been "ambroidered. The bours where there is only one

Published. at 2/- net, 44,

"Yet there is still something to author was chief of the German white trouble of the surf. Some calendar, and she the only saint

Leicester Square, London.]

redeem the desolation. There is Intelligence Department during are white days, full of a sparkle written there.. Before the anchor

Even though he may have a

one blurred image which remains the War, so his revelations are yearning after things of sunlight like a spray above the falls, white men are off to her great

Years of love and sympathy accurate. water. On some days mountains between the breaches in the surf. beautiful the man who goes to an to the dazed and tortured mind. likely to be both intimate and The chain is hardly taut when the exhibition of great paintings between two people never go for So enthusiastic was the récep that have been long lost rise out of little canoes and the surf bonts are knowing little or nothing of art nothing, Sometimes they seem to tion of Mr. Rafael Sabatini's "Life the sea; at noon they are faint and alongside, and white men are run-is conscious of an incapacity of fade, but they live on in the sub- of Cesare Borgia that Messrs. far away; but with evening they ning up the ladder. And suddenly, true appreciation of the painters' conscious sphere and rise again, as Stanien Paul feel justified in issu draw in and east anchor before the with the letting go of the anchor, inner meaning. It is magazines it were, from the tomb. Now the ing a companion volume dealing little cabin where you live. They in that great room of the sea and like The Studio," the November son is thinking of one person only with Cesare's father Rodrigo are blue. Thus beauty, in her sky, or in that narrow river room for review, that can supply this number of which has reached us

-the father. Not that He is Borgia, later Pope Alexander VL, SIEBERT OF THE ISLAND." name given to her fancy when rod the rock of your monotony, agitations of traffic and of coming manner possible it sketches be worse than the first Never- tion for impartiality; and in "The various fashion, smites with her with its forest wall, there are the deficiency. In the most interest.certain of being taken back; for His biographer, The Most Rat.“

the last wound to self-respect may Arnold H. Mathew, has a reputa it was ravenously hungry. "She and water does indeed gush forth; merce. The winches fore and aft made reveries about him, began to you drink and are assuaged. But thrum and clamour; voices of the lives of artists particularly fashion his face in her mind before still you look to the sea: you have walked, her little body sung in the and it is not for beauty that you thrilling play that this young hunt with your glass; it is for stranger stood by and "looked at excitement. You are hunting for her. She was determined to be the very heart and flaming core of loved and

atl a certain physical excitement, fastidiousness was her nearest steamer....... approach to caution." Less has saved many a girl's soul. More would not have saved Creena's A tropic girl, half uncivilised at birth and still nothing but a child, she was made for love.

A ROMANCE OF THE SOUTHERN SEAS.

Gordon Young's Latest.

[Published at 7/6 by T Fisher Unwix, Ltd., London, W.C]

Oreena was, the daughter of an escaped Australian convict and a Samoan girl of "teasing sweet ness." After years of agony spent at a young ladies' seminary at Virginia where she had been sent by her adoring father whose ambition was to see her and her younger sister brought up as "real ladies," Orcena returned home to Puluty. The sweet delicate South- ern girls had callert them niggers and had turned away with their hankies to their poses and in a fierce rebellion at life in general Oreens and thrown herself at the first eligible man who crossed her path.

As it happened it was Siebert who from the first had seemed old to her. "He was not handsome with his huge fleshy body and sunburn- "ed redness, big white teeth always showing in unconvincing cheerful-

white men and of black met rise before the public eye at thetheless he is going back impelled she ever saw him; at times, as she a glass at hand-it is a ship's glass from the water level, and from the moment, reproduces some of their by a strė impülse.

And how did Paullen regard her? To him she was the most beautiful woman in the world and her action in giving herself to Siebert appeared to him to be a martyrdom. It was nothing to him that hers was purely a tropic bloom and that there was not warmth of feeling, no sweetness aglow within her to soften the scratchings of the years which with a sentient, cruel eagerness would be after her prettiness.

And so matters drifted with meetings at the waterfall. It was a thin stream of water but it fell there so that in the sunlight it was a long way, and the spray hovered

that is

21

How shall I be telling of steam- ers to the dwellers in great har: bour towns, where the loveliest ladies of the sea come and 80 without applause? Or to inlanders who never see a mast at all, unless it is the superstructure of an oil well? You whose house is, on the Hudson, where a steamer, is at anchor before your very door-it is eight bells; the hour was struck, and did you hear the bell? The signal stands in the engine-room you hear that drumming? A week she lay in the river; this morning she is gone, and are you therefore lonely in the world?

at "Full Steam Ahead,” and did

deck; cargo is alung off and on, dripping with the gilt of palm oil and the dust of rice-bags or reck ing of salt fish.

to go ashore.

...

1

paintings and reads into them, or gets experts on the work of that artist to read into them what the artist would that the observer should learn from him.

re-assurance, a newborn ..con. relieves and re-interprets the tidence in the father's love which emotions of despair.

L

Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgin he gives a study at once interest- ing and prudite, which throw much light on the personality of man who was in many respects an incarnation of evil. The volume will be published early this Autumn. *·

4

"This sculpture is not quite true to the Gospel story, but it is true nough to life. The boy cannot make a "good" confession and say that, he has "sinned." A formal statement is beyond him: The A day is all too.short for what'

Could there be conceived a more weary brain and parched, dry lips must be done with the barber and beautiful way of bringing to the can only frame the one word, strit, newly translated, with an

"Adolphe" by Benjamin Con the steward and the purser and beginning of a truer appreciation Father Perhaps it is not more Introduction by J. Lewis May will the chief and the captain of The of the work of Rodin than the than a whisper, but it is enough. be published immediately in Steamer. All the white men find following by Joyce Nankivell and Had it not been enough but here Messrs. Stanley Paul's "Inter a day too short. Night comes too the picture which accompanies it? thought sechs to falter and national Library." It narrates soon; the steamer hangs upon the dark like a bouquet of fire works, trate the essence of a grief. It must have been the artists' poignant and romantic story of "Sometimes an artist will pene-imagination fails. Instead, what under elaborate disguises the arrested. The last load of cargo may well be that he cannot analyse intuition of the truth becomes out the author's liaison with Madame has gone over the side; the ship's launcensed to so and it, or even present it, as a problem own. We feel a dawning sense of de Stael. sleeps in her berth on deck; the

-he simply enters into it. second officer has made his last of the Prodigal Son. The familiar "Rodin has done so in his bronze bitter, gomments and has gone story, so beautiful even in the below to wash himself, and the well-worn phrases of the Gospel, time has come for the white men has been vitalised to such a degree They hang over that the solid material employed the railing calling to their little sinks into crews that are asleep; they hardly seems to be there. The insignificance. It negotiate the difficult descent into emotion of the artist has dissolved their boats-for the trade swell is it into space, It is all emotion, about the ship now and they go the kneeling figure of the boy, off into the rain.

naked, his head and arms thrown back in an attitude of desperation,

to keep himself from falling. with scarcely the muscular control

"It is not the figure of a perit-published a few days ago by ent. It is that of a young boy, Messrs. Stanley Paul has already. of adverse circumstance. He is ing is in active preparation. Mrs. bruised, bleeding, stupifled-hurt Nepean is an artist as well as as an animal is hurt without the an author, and before she was. knowledge that to some extent nineteen several of her landscapes counteracts pain. There is no had been exhibited. Some years palliative here. The wreckage of back she was a prize-winner at the a passionate but undeveloped Royal National Eisteddfod of nature is nearly complete, while Wales. She was born and educat- the boy's experience of life is too ed at Llandudno, “ narrow to yield him the saving One of the most interesting: sense of proportion, the realisation books announced for Autumn pub- that all is not lost, nor even can be. lication by Messrs. Stanley Paul is That is the worst tragedy.

"The German Secret Sarvice?" by "Every fall involves some pain. Colonel W. Nicolai, translated by Pain is its natural consequence, George Renwick Special Corres-

Miss Nora K Strange whoge received a good deal of praise from first novel "An Outpost Wooing

the critics, is bringing out her second book, this month, with LITERARY NOTES: Messrs. Stanley Paul. It is called »,

"Latticed Windows," and in it the What Eden Phillpotts has done authoress describes the social life. for Devonshire, by creating an out and forest scenery of Kenya side interest in the rural life of Colony with a sureness of touch the country, Edith Nepean is that could only come from the pen doing for North Wales generally of one who both knows and loves and Carnarvonshire in particular that country. The first edition of her latest novel "The Valley of Desire" which was

she

ness; but he had a heartiness very bows were hung all about truly a followed with a sigh; speculation her chronometer and your life by battered down by the sheer force sold out, and a second large print-

In the lost places of the earth a steamer is the great presence she furnishes the empty seas However, far out and dim, with her little plume of smoke, she leaves her wake, in the heart. a mist of colours as if broken rain-There are shores where from every white man's cabin her passing is broods upon her all day long. Her ports, her flags, her cargo, her crew, seem a little while to live in the mind after she has gone down the slope of the world. She may be a poor, mean, unkempt cargo boat, dingy upon a bright sea, but she is the symbol of migration, and a winged flutter in the heart

As for The Steamer, that is another matter. And be sure that there is no steamer so mean, so obscure in her listed sailings, but is The Steamer to prisoners somewhere, behind a

psy-

like contempt for all people and fascinating picture and the charac- this bad satisfied her dislike of ters who passed before it present them; he drove his blacks and their overseers and this was like in general and

in their attitudes towards life 10 each mastery, his groves grew in other in particular 11 straight rows that climbed bills chological problem which the and down again, which was author has worked out in a wealth."

manner which will hold the atten tion of any reader who picks up the book even though it be, but at first to glance at its pages. By far the most interesting study is that of Seibert-of whom the reader is kept in a continual, state of sur- mise as to his real character. The book should have a large sale.

And then Paullen came. It mattered little to her that her sister Nada was obviously much in love with him and that the match was desirable from every point of view. Oreena was as ready to have a hand reach up for her as a pear deed ripe.. John Paullen was

There is this about The Steamer You keep your best white ducks comes and she goes. for her: you keep all your dates for her; you set your watch by her schedule. Your letters home are full of her, worship. But she has such sweethearts in every port; the rush and enthusiasm of her advent is matched by the rush and enthusiasm of her exit; she carries her garland of lights away into the darkness, of her feather of smoke into the noon; she grows smaller and dimmer; her drums grow fainter, and once again in a silence and a void...... you "can have no note unless the sun were post "Jean Kenyon Mackenzie, in "African Clearings."

|

'',

COLUMBINES.

Late were we sleeping

Deep-in the mold, Clasping and keeping

Yesterday's gold- Hoardings of sunshine,

Crimson and gold; Dreaming of light till our dream

became

Aureate bells and beakers "of

flame..

Raindrop awoke' us; Zephyr bespoke.us; Chickadee called us, Bobolink called us,

Then we came. Arthur Guiterman, in

Mirthful Lyre."

.3

WORLD THEATRE

ป

A DRAMA OVERWHELMING IN FORCE

JACK HOLT, HEDDA NOVA

and Everybody's Darling "MICKEY MOORE

In

A MOST THRILLING. PHOTODRAMA

THE MASK"

SEVEN REELS OF MYSTERY, THRILLS AND

ROMANCE REPLETE WITH SURPRISES AND

THRILLS THIS PICTURE IS ONE OF

THE MOST GRIPPING AND ABSORBING

PHOTOPLAYS OF THE SEASON.

OTOPLA

Also

THE PORTUGUESE AVIATORS'

FLIGHT TO MACAO

GREAT DEMONSTRATION ON THEIR ABBIVAL

ན་

Sunday, 28th. to Tuesday, 30th. Dec.

USUAL PRICES.

SCREENLAND.

"THE DEMI-VIRGINS."

A fow months ago, Mr. Armand du Plessy gave to the world a photoplay daring in theme, startling in originality, intensely dramatic, entitled The Bachelor Girl,” It has gone down into motion pictures bis- tory as one of the greatest screen productions of the last season.

Now Mr. Plessy has come along with "Demi-Virgins,” a beautiful screen adaptation of Marcel Prevost's world known masterpiece. It shows the same daring, the same originality,, the same evidence of deep thought|- as his earlier production and there are such powerful dramatic factors that lift this picture on an even higher plane than his pre- vious one.

As the title indicates the pro duction is one of truly momentous timeliness. The great French author has drawn. his story on a huge canvas of cyclonic emotions, His characters are real, flesh and blood. men and women, most of them moving in the swift set of the world's fastest and," most furious metropolis.

"Demi-Virgins" also. In addition to being a great and pronounced beauty, Mile. Dhelia is an actress) er unusual ability and her work in "Demi-Virgins" surpasses by far all her past achievements. As Maud de Rouvres in Demi- Virgins, Miss Dhelia is superb and throughout the entire pic- ture she gives an exceptional per- formance. The star is supported by an exceptionally brilliant, cast which; included such well-known actors as Gaston Jacquet, Leonic Bożou and hundred others.

"THE MASK"

Jack Holt, Hedda Nova and little "Mickey Moore" are the stars who head an exceptionally fine cast in interpreting a most dramatic story of mystery. It is Holt's best picture. He played a dual personality with tremen- dous vigour and power: Firet he is a wealthy San Francisco busi- ness nian on a trip to an African diamond mine.. Then he plays the role of the scapegoat brother. Mise Nova," in the part of a woman who didn't know her hus- band, displays her skill in acting The story depicts the whims as a mother, wife and house- and foibles, the moral laxity..and womun... Mickey Moore, the little' the unbridled excesses of modern screen wonder, takes one of the society, especially those who con-leading parts with rare ability for stitutes "Le Grand Monde." It a child. "The Mask" has been is told with all the smashing sin-scheduled for three days run at cerity, all the lashing scorn and the World Theatre, commencing towering truth they deserve. on Sunday, December 28, and The producer goes far beyond cinema-goers are advised not to the little group of interesting miss it. characters portrayed in the story. He makes of his subject a mighty human canvas upon which the picturization of present social con- ditions and morale is painted.

Been.

A good example of harmonious picture production is in the It is in no way an attack on now at the World Theatre.. The "Lullaby,” an F. O. B. attraction. womankind, as well as in no way lullaby theme is carried through- & sermon. But in the very mag out the presentation of the film, mitude of the theme's treatment, both by the orchestra and in the it drives home a lesson the whole world will be better for having is scheduled to remain for to-day atory itself. The picture, which

only, is one of Miss Novak's best, For the shear magnificence of and sets off the star to great ad- its scenic investiture this extravantage in settings, both vivid ordinary photoplay caps the and drab. In the more sombre climax of the scene builder's art, settings, Miss Novak'e beauty The gorgeousness of its lavish beams forth like a bright gem on Bettings and costumings excels by a background of black, while in far many other great productions more luxurious surroundings, she offered to the Hongkong public. is the crowning glory of the bril

France Dhella who scored a Hant-scope As an setress she distinct and signal success in has few equals on the screen to- The Bachelor Girl" in the atellar day, such is her skill and charm role is the lending actressining appeal.

EUROPE'S MOST CHARMING SCREEN STAR FRANC DHELIA

in

"The DEMI-VIRGINS"

A MAGNIFICENT LOVE DRAMA BASED ON THE FAMOUS NOVEL BY GASTON ROUDE. Here is a passionate and true French love story-nude and without hypocrisy. Stars: Pretty women in gorgeous gowns of the latest creations, that will attract the 'attention of Hongkong's well dressed women,,,

Hula-Hala, Jazz, Ballet with Vivacious and Ardatic movement Those who expect to see “Natural” scenes similar to those described in Marcel Prevost's world famous novel will have a pleasing surprise because the producers added poppery scenes to it and made the film version really better than the book.

Gorgeously gowned and with magnificent settings presenting a, blaze of wealth and luxury, this picture will surely be numbered among the greatest attractions of the year,

Starting Wednesday Next,

REMEMBER THE DATE."

WORLD

THEATRE.

0000000