1925-05-02 — Page 14

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BOOKS

"SANDWICHP". OF, COCAINE."

A-BOOK ABOUT THIEVES,

Crooks and "Sharks." and all the strange underworld of London pass through the pages of Mr. J. G. Goodwin's latest Book,

The cocaine is now like the meat in a sandwich-in the

THE DEFECTIVE NOVEL

AN EXPERT'S VIEWS.

THE CHINA MAIL.

BOOKS AND READING.

ملكة

THE CONRAD SALE.

It's this mania for keeping

Nothing very remarkable hap- up to date, said Mr. Cardan, pened at the sale of the Conrad 'that has killed the art of read- Mr. A. E. W. Mason, one of our

ing. Most of the people I know manuscripts, typescripts and finest writers of detective stories, read three or four daily news proofsheets sold by Messrs. gives his views in the Nation," papers, look at half-a-dozen Hodgson. The highest price was on the perfect detective novel. So weeklies between Saturday and many famous people have on Monday, and a dozen reviews at $150 paid for the original holo- the end of every month. And the graph manuscript of "The Tale," fessed their liking of good deter rest of the time, as the Bible a short story of the Great War. tive fiction, and as an acknow-with justifiable vigour would put it was much altered and over- ledged expert Mr. Mason's ideal is worthy of consideration.

written. The next price was £86 The raw material for detective

paid for the typescript of an un- stories is lying about in the

published article, "The Unlighted streets, for whosoever can make use of it. The making use of it is,

Coast," Conrad's impressions of

it, the rest of the time they are whoring after new fiction, new plays and verses and biographies. They have no time to do anything but skim along un- comprehendingly. If you must tragedy in terms of farce you can only expect confusion. Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by gen erations of readers are very

SATURDAY, MAY 2, 1925.

ADMIRABLE AUNTS

RELATIONS WITH AUTHORS,

LOVE.

We should all be kind and good

The well-meaning aunt, the in- and unselfish if we always re torfering pant, the aunt with the remembered remembered that benevolent or eccentric testament other people are just as much ary intentions, encli has her place

alive and Individual and in the vast categorý of anthood;

We are, but we are concerned, for the complicated as monit, with the aunt admirable membered that everybody needs (writes Dorothy M. Stuart in the love just as much, that the only foremost place, in this illustrions visible reason why we exist in the Daily Telegraph. Surely the sisterhood must be assigned to Miss world is to love and be loved." Catherine Porten, at whose name divara Gibbon felt on five difer ent occasions five separate and dis tinet tears of gratitude trickle down his ample check. When Mrs

"If loving without being loved in return may be ranked as one. of the most painful of experi- ences, being loved without loving of the most

middle-and he gums the edges of course, the difficulty," Mr. | complicate the matter by writing his trip on a mystery ship, includ-Gibbon left, the infant Edward is certainly one

of the two halves together, re- places the card in its pack and regums the wrapper, and there you are?

For a pound weight of cocaine

Mason says..

I

"Queer Fish" (Hutchinson & Co., nearly £4,000 can be obtained by the story with even greatër bare different from the destinies fore- should write the record of the It was slig who steered the author, one making a fool of himself

188.)

Crime is now highly specialis- ed, says Mr. Goodwin, so that we do not speak of thieves, but of Badder thieves, portico thieves, area thieves, sneak thieves, and

ונל 54

There is, again, the insurance thler, who, agranges robberies, and piles nf, i fortune by allowing his stock to be stolen, over and over again...

Effe in a gaming den in the West-end reveals some queèr folk. Mr. Goodwin wont with a man, formerly in the Special Branch at Scotland Yard, who told him f something of the proprietor.

→

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this method, when diluted with 20 per cent of boric acid powder and another 20 per cent. of powdered aspirin.

Jewel thieves probably show more ingenuity in obtaining their spoils than others.

HIDDEN IN A CRATE,

Mr. Goodwin relates how two public school boys became crooks. in 1914 they went into the army, but were invalided out early in 1916. Their mother a widow, died, and they went through their hartine, and decided to take up jewel thiering,

In their first adventure they drove up to an Eating jeweller's disguised as workmen, and in broad daylight removed from its fastenings a large glass case full of jewellery.

A your, ago, he was running a place in St. John's Wood, when he would let sharps play, bring ing out special packs for their uge. By examining the scrolls

Their second job" was more work design on the back the face versatile. They disguised them of the card was kann The selves as a coachman and his sharps used to hand over 30-permate, and when a jewel, traveller cent of their winnings to the proprietor.

.

Á SIDE ISSUE.

with his driver drove up as usual to certain Acton hotel, “took their places on the box and got This man huid w sich-issue. He towny with the samples. ! muggled cocaine from a lam-4 Even more like il "penny burg café. One lot was sewn up | dreadful" was their third Inside a little girl's doll, and | Escapade. They "noticed, that a another consignment was hidden in hollowed-ou tablets of a According to Mr. Goodwin, it was distributed this

1

He steams the wrapper of a puck of cards.soon after he's bought it. Then he splits card in two, generally "one of the aces: He spreads the powdered cocaine over the one- balt and replaces the other half.

jewellery establishment near the big woolen, erate the same day Strand had a heavy delivery in a

every week.

They duplicated the crate, one youth get inside,"und the same night the cracksman unfastened it. crawl out, put all the burglar a rms out of action, and let his brother.in by the back

way..

After that they helped them

selves.

"For the ordinary conditions of fiction remain, plus something clse, The locality and setting must be worked into the woof of

than usual. For one touch of fairyland ruins it altogether. It must appear to be a record of located facts. Defoe would have. written the perfect detective

novel.

There is, perhaps, in every-,

thing of any consequence, a secret history which it would be using to know, could we have if authentically communicated Mr. Boswell wrote of Dr. Johnson's trouble with Lord Chesterfield; and that sentence contains the whole theory of detective fiction. First the facts as known to, the public and then the secret history authentically- communicated.

Again, if the

obviously to the author's plan characters are wooden and react rather than to their own natural lines of conduct, the detective story fails, as will any other kind of fiction. The conditions are the same except that in the detective story the form is a little more. rigid, and there is something else --the puzzle.

"No doubt, for its, entertain ment, the book will rely consider ably upon its puzzle. It is fun For the author, who tries by what- master of to keep his secret to the ever ingenious means he may be

too, for the reader, who seeks to last possible moment. It is fun,

disentangle the threads and beat the author.

"For this reason, if the book is to succeed, the author must play fair, he must not seek to baffle his reader by introducing some new character, or some new factor at the very end of the book without which a solution of his mystery is impossible. But, he must so con-

ing an account of a fight between perdu at Putney, and dashed of to

Zeppelin and a drifter. This enjoy the social whitt elsewhere, it boring. Perhaps no experience is was one of the few literary fruits was Miss Porten who installed her better calculated to make one of the Great War from Conrad's self in the chair this left empty, realise the senselessness of the hand. It was. intended that he by the side of her nephew's cradle. passion. The spectacle of some

arouses only laughter. When one is playing the fool oneself, one weeps. But when one is neither the active imbecile nor the dis- interested spectator," but the un- willing cause of somebody else's folly then it is that one comes to feel that weariness and that disgust which are the proper, the human reaction to any display of the deep animal'stupidity that is the root of all evil."

seen for them by their authors.mercantile marine in the war, and for the Peeling and Fall throngly Gulliver's Travels, with a mini- again that he should write on the the many and menacing ailments of mum of expurgation, has become work of the seaplanes, and he had his pressarions childhood, who drew children's book; a new illus many fine experiences in the out and helped to develop his early trated edition is produced every opportunities given to him for intelligence, and who, when he Christmas, That's what comes

that purpose. But racehorses was sent to Westminster School, of saying profound things about will be racehorses, and Conrad took a house in Dean's Yard so humanity in terms of a fairy found it impossible to do any that, as he puts it, instead of story. Sometimes the adult thing but his own high, wayward audicionsly mingling in the spats, masterpieces of one generation work.

the quarrels, unit the connections, become the reading of schoolboys

of our little world, I was cherished in the next......At the end of

it home under the maternal wing the account it is the readers who

of my aunt, make the book what it ultimately. ia. The writer proposes, the readers dispose."-"Those Box- reu. Leayes,” by Aldous Huxley.

shall be tempted to go back, and. duct his story that the reader

read the book again, and that on such a reperusal, he shall be com pelled to say: Yes, the truth was there set out for me to see if I had been able to see it.

"I have left the greatest of all the conditions necessary in this kind of book to the last. All the great detective novels are known by and live on account of their detectives. Lupin, Sherlock Holmes, Monsieur Lecocq above all, I think, Monsieur Lecocq in the volume of the novel which

bears his name. Has not Father Brown joined, that select com- pany? The detective must be an outstanding person,. actual, picturesque, amusing, a creature

5

Whom shall we se beside Miss Porten on the dais of honom? Il imaginary ants be eligible, it must surely be Miss Betsey Trotwood, even at the risk that he might at nayoment leap from her lofty plang weth the kid slogan "danes, donkey? But, should we besi- tate to set a ligiment, however con Evincing, besile an historic reality, dow we could find more warthy neighbour for Miss Porten than Alias Scout of Sandy Knewe, The complete final typed copy at whe cliarmed his cripple

Sir Walter's "kind and affectionsfë of "The Rover," with alterations

Childhood with Border ballads, and corrections, brought £50, and the corrected and mad Hardykite so often typescript of "Personal Recollecin resise to his reiterate tions of Ste, en Crane" £68. prals that he soon had long pas- The holograph manuscript of the ages of that rocneo epie by heart, author note to "Youth, which proceeded to work thein of is a record of some of his per-paris.

on the disconcerted "meclister of sonal experiences, brought £43.

We catch a last glimpse of Aunt Jenny" when, as an ancient maiden lady she had ublished herself at Kelso, in small cottage surrounded by

den which her nephew has des Frified in phrases

many

Long Haired Visitor (entering timill have here

little

of power and singularity. With poem writion, on suow, and-" ".) nut such a being, the detective Editor (terrupting)—"Written novel, however ingenious, will ¦ om snoar ! We can't use anything pass back to the lending library, ❘ that isn't written on paper. Sorry. With him it may find a perman-Turn the knob to the right. That's ent place upon the bookshelf.". it Good morning."

יי

youth.

"It may be merely that I'm old" and that my wits have thickened with my arteries; but it does seem to me that love isn't quite so ex- citing how as it used to be in my ground, the toe of a protruding shoe is an allurement. And there ing everything." There was no were skirts, in those days, drap-· Frankness, no seen feality; only imagination. We were powder magazines of repression, and the smallest hint was a spark. Now, about in kits and are as bare- adays, when young women: backed as wild horses, there's no excitemeat. The cards are all on the table, nothing's left to fancy. All's aboveboard And conse- quently boring."Those Barren Leaves," by Aldous Huxley,

When skirts touch the

41

go

which 7058

walks between hedges of yew a hornbeam, tall aux close on either side, There were thickets of flowery shrubs, a bower, and su arbour. In the centre of the hower was a splendid Plataons, or Oriental plane, a huge bill of leaves." May the ghosts Sir Lof all good aunts dwell for over in "of long straight the ghosts of just such a gurilen t

Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green

shade. "Tt Was full." Walter,

WORLD THEATRE.

COMING

·HAS EVERY WOMAN HER PRICE?

COMING!

-She was innocent and yet the evidence told the jealous

husband that she had been bought with jewels and money.

-He thought that every woman had her price, but not his own wifet

A chance flirtation, the meeting of eyes and then the trouble began. -Here is the most famous story of le, intrigue and thrilling battle in all English literature. It has been made into the talked-of pic- ture of the year!

Goldwyn bresanče, Hugo Ballin's Production of

Vanity Fair

By Thackeray

ww.Mabel Ballina Becky Sharp Supported by Hobart Bonathan Lord Steyne diatributes by GOLDWYN

WAS BECKY SHARP TO BLAME?

NATURE GAVE HER A PAIR OF EYES THAT WOULDN'T BEHAVE!

WATCH FOR ITS OPENING DATE

SCREENLAND.

"VANITY FAIR."

One of the most notable photo-, play custs of the year will be seen in this city, when Hugo Ballin's production of "Vanity Fuir" comes

the World Theatre very soon. This produc- tion was made at the Goldwyn studios for distribution by that company and Mr. Ballin had. at his disposal all the best resources of the Goldwyn organization. The picture is one of the film achievements of the year and gives the story of Thackeray's masterpiece as he wrote it in his novel.

with Fanny Ward in "The Crystal Gazers." He recently scored a big hit in the screen version of Denman Thompson's →The-Old- Homestead."

George Walsh, brother of R. A. Walsh, the director, plays the part of Rawdon Crawley. In his previous screen appearances, he has bech cast for roles which call- ed for athletic prowess and dar- in "Vanity Fair" is one of the ing feats. His Rawdon Crawley

high lights in the east.

L

The

Captain William Dobbin is" played by Earle Foxe, the young actor who made his screen debut with Griffith and has since acted important roles with every big producer in the industry.. Joseph Sedley of the cast is play ed by Willard Louis, a San Fran- ciscan who started his stage Mabel Ballin, the wife of the career with Eleanor Harrigan. producer, is starred as Becky His stage sister, Amelia Sedley, is Sharp. She is conceded to be played by Eleanor Boardman, the one of the most charming of the young woman recently selected by Goldwyn out of two thousand popular film stars of the day and applicants in New York City and has constantly been adding to her given small roles. Miss Board- reputation as a screen. player of man made вист A big exceptional ability. She has ap-hit in Marshall Neilan's. “The peared in all of the Hugo Ballin Strangers' Banquet" that she was productions up to date, included

In which are Jane Eyre," "East Lynne," "The Journey's End" and other successful productions.

Technically, there are four leading men in this production. At the head of these, on account of his long years of experience on the stage and in the silent drama, comes Hobart Bosworth. Ife acts the role of the Marquis of Steyne, a part which he has acted on the speaking stage. Mr. Bosworth needs no introduction to any motion picture audience in

given the present role in "Vanity Fair" and at the conclusion of

WORLD THEATRE

TO:DAY ONLY, 5.15 and 9.16 p.m.

THE WORLD'S FOREMOST CHARACTER ACTOR GEORGE ARLISS

with

ALICE JOYOBTM

and a cast of celebritica

in

"THE GREEN GODDESS"

(IN TEN MAGNIFICENT REELS) The famous stage success of several years has been made into a screen triumph. The perfection of detail, the intelligent direction and the gorgeous settings make it a vital, gripping play that holds one tense.

Don't Miss Your Last Chance.

STARTING TO-MORROW, 6 & 9.15 p.m.

FLORADORA ·

( THE FAMOUS VAUDEVILLE COMPANY). IN THEIR NEWEST SONGS AND DANCES

also

,:

BUDDY MESSINGER

In

“LOW BY DGE"

palace hag expresses that was selected to act the illustrated by the scene in which this ingenue lend in "Souls for. Sale." Lucilla Crespin, the heroine of the intrigue.

The door swings open and Other members of the cast are: story, played by Alice Joyce; falls Laura La Varnie, William Hum-into the power of an Indian Lucilla enters, the narrow cor- a trap. phreys, Robert Mack, Tempe Rajah, who separates her. from ridor closes on her like

James Pigott,

Marcus,

Otto her husband and sends her into Thig suggests her helplessness. As she passes before a latticed Lederer, Frank Hayes. and a his harem.

The usual thing would have doorway, she hears a murmur dozen others.

been to depict the flaming en- and starts; beyond the lattice the trance of the Rajah, his love eyes of jealous women glare at scene with the shuddering her. We catch a glimpse of these woman, his brutal kisses and her concubines of the prince crouch- struggle. Such scenes have been ing to peer at the Englishwoman. so often and so obviously done To them she represents the latest favourite of the master und

"THE GREEN GODDESS."

any country. He started his film The Green Goddess" as a play that they have lost their effect, career when motion pictures.were was a model of technique, having still regarded as an adjunct of been written by Wiliam Archer matter in a different way by burning gaze, knows what they Mr. Halsey approaches the Lucilla, shrinking, from their the nickelodeon and made as one of the world's greatest merely suggesting the danger. feel, and cannot defend hersel rapid advance in mastering the authorities on the drama. As a All thresholds are fateful and In this effective manner the technique of screen acting as the moving picture it is equally great nothing expresses destiny mure scenario writer brings before us a motion picture camera has in re-in this respect. All interested in clearly than a door. We see tragedy of suspended fear which cording action. He made the first scenario writing should not fail to Lucilla hesitating before the la far more dramatic than the Ave-reel picture ever produced in see the film version of The entrance to the women's quarters, usual scene of unchained passion. Los Angeles, a screen version of Green, Goddess, the Distinctive where two eunuchs with drawn The manner in which the char "The Count of Monte Cristo" and picture starring George Arliss, words stand on guard, symbolike acters are developed, and the way has starred in a score of other which is shown at the Worlding the cruel and deepotic power. Which the many intensely, motion picture features.

en Theatre for the last cine to-day of their master. Through a dramatic scenes are forshadow

Particular attention is called to Judas-hole in the dark nalled in the scenario of "The Green the suggestive methods of Forrest studded door, the face of a hide Goddess" are also very much Halsey, the 'scénario writer, and master in the art This is best Qua old woman looks out. If the worth the attention of the student

eunuchs represent despotic power, of screen technique.

The George Osborne of the cast is Harrison Ford, a screen recruit from the legitimate stage who made his first picture appearance