1928-01-26 — Page 10

10

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If we could analyse the in- gredients of the popular shocker ably enough to put the component parts together again, we should be free of financial care for all time. Nothing in the sphere of writing рауб во well as the "best-seller" mystery, (writes S. P. B. Mais In a London paper). This must be the reason why the ordinary novelist la 80 contemptuous of his richer colleagues. Envy of other men's success has the strangest effect on the literary artist, The majority of novelists rely on experiences which they themselves have actual ly undergone for their material, It falls to the lot of most of us

WG

"TEARS, IDLE TEARS.”

AMAZING FIGURE IN THE CHURCH.

ever

Several modern ́American au-

It is doubtful whether the thors with outstanding reputations Church of England (which is a

Institution) base their novels on the reputed comprehensive blatancy of the small-town Ameri-produced a more amazing ... figuré Mr. Sinclair Lewis and his than Laurence Sterne. "Tristram school are severely criticised by Shandy" is a novel which, had it Miss Margaret Prescott Montague been written by a layman, would In "The Forum Magazine." Miss have evoked adverse comment in Montague calls her article "The the austore circles. Coming from Fugitive Seeks Sanctuary.". a cleric, its audacity is enough to take one's breath away. If Sterne set out with, the intention of ahock- ing his readers, he certainly suc ceeded.

The "fugitive" is the average hero of the average American novel, and the "sanctuary" that he seeks is almost anywhere except the kind of situations that his authors put him in. He finds this sanctuary in the pages of "The Forum," but the authors set their bloodhounds on

in a sedentary age to have few phy-him, and not until he has stuck ex- sical experiences of any outstand clamation points through them and ing interest, even to ourselves, but "brained them with a handful of to make up for proverty here by a semi-colonia" does he at length es- multitude of spiritual experiences, cape to the real American small become introspective. Our town which, Miss Montague per- novels are all intensely subjective. sists in believing, is a very plea- The mystery mongers are just as sant, place to live in. But Miss Their books Montague lets for hunted character intensely objective. are not an index of their charac-speak for himself, which is more ters.

than his authors always do. "Why so furiously hate do the authors me?" he asks. "Heavens, how very weary I am of all this wickedness." But he adds dolefully that his au- thors keep him wicked, and so, "not being allowed to reform, continue to function in my wicked way all through the backwoods and small towns from Nevada to New York State."

*

No one could tell what Mr. Edgar Wallace is like from "The Mixer," No one could fall to tell what most of our psychologist-novelists are like from their scarcely-at-all vell ed autobiographies. It is the writ- er of the shocker who gives his imagination rein, who brings us into touch with circumstances and people of a sort that we are ex- tremely unlikely to meet with in ordinary life. We only wish, some

a times, that we could. It ia strange tradition that would place a nauseating description of a per- verted mentality higher in the category of art than a thrilling de-spilling tective story.

Style.

Miss Montague explains in a note to the editor that what she personally sees in the American small town is not at all what the fashionable novelista see, but in stead pleasant little dooryards with summer

all over

bloom," and presumably aleo, people

as pleasant as their dooryards.

The editor bimself, in a one- page comment, agrees with Miss Montague.

adrift from society, and spend a brief hectic period of excitement in the society of criminals we should probably be knifed, shot, or impri soned before we had even scented

adventure. How much wiser, then; to have all the fun and none of the risk by satisfying our blood-lust vicariously."

What is Wanted.

It is suggested that few of the shockers of to-day will be read a hundred years hence. It is equally certain that very few of the high- brow novelists of the age will be read after their death, What is strange about the full-blooded dramatic objective narrative is the slipshod style in which it is often presented. The men who have no thing to write about except their own tedious mental development polish their phrases until their sparkle often makes us mistake for brilliance what is merely the polish of a surface over which one pen has run many times. The mystery mongers, on the other hand, hav- ing exhausted themselves by in something more than danger. We venting a sufficiently tangled plot, want a problem at least as difficult scem often to have no energy left of elucidation as a chess problem. to clothe the bare bones with We like plans of the house, time- verbal artistry. They are satisfied tables, movements of all characters if they present you with a volume concerned, so that we can detect akin in its starkness to Bradshaw. flaws in the alibia for ourselves. It has been all to the good of The good mystery story ought to the detective story that stylista make us feel that we have been have come into the field. A quar-empanelled on a jury, and it is of tet like Lord Charnwood, Lord paramount Importance that we Gorell, Father R. A. Knox, and G. Į should suit all the evidence our- K. Chesterton can do much to show selves, and convince ourselves that the other competitors in the field we are not condemning an innocent the advantage of trying to make to death or letting the guilty go unusual people like murderers and free.

But in the ideal thriller we usk

At the same time, it is probable that Sterne was less black then he has been painted, or that he some- times painted himself. That he was an exemplary parish priest is to the last degree unlikely. He was a temperamental philanderer and an incurable sentimentalist, but there is no reason to suppose that his devotion to all and sundry of the weaker sex led him. very far from the strict path of rectitude.

"The Letters of Laurence Sterne," selected by R. Brimley Johnson, afford a very fair Indica- tion of the man's character. them all the most interesting are those addressed to Eliza.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1928.

DAILY CROSS-WORD PUZZLE.

(This cross-word puzzle has been made by an expert but our readers are warned to look out for occasional phonetic spellings, such as harbor, plow, and altho.) (/

1424

16

HORIZONTAL

+Rigid

To make stilt *-Bashful

Of

Eliza Draper, who made so great an impression upon Sterne that he declared he could never

see the incomparable Mrs. Draper without bursting into tears," was born in 1744. When about 15 she married 'Doniel Draper, of Bombay, whom she afterwards left to elope with a naval officer. In January, 1767. she brought her children to Eng- land to be educated, and it was on this occasion that she encountered Sterne...

10–9hoemaker's tool 18-Court 15-Fish soga

14-Famous American

post

16-And not 16-Smirk

18-Farm past 19-Lawful

23-A tumble

25-Early Tautenla

alphabet

27-Fish net 28-Forward payment 30-Bare

88-Light blow

TO

132

138

145

16

24

25

39 140

45

14

THE INTERNATIONAL SYNDICATE.

| HORIZONTAL (Cont.) |

34-8cholarly

25-Handguar

38-Part of fish

39-Single Individual 41-To have obligation 42-Enomy

43-Qained by victory {44-Frachans

145-Sanctified parsona

VERTICAL 1-Hasty writing

-Also

3-A cereal

4-Animal

6-Cry of a shoep 6-Beard of wheat

7-Game of cards B-Causing death 111-Human belag

VERTICAL (Cont.) 15-Hard rock

17-Atons for 20-Previous to [21-8ap of certain traga

22-8attled down upon 28-Mambar of congress

(abbr.)

24-Writing fluid

25-8haŝtorad side 28-Malice

29-Wireles

31-Blacks of twelve 32-Plaited collar 83-Waster away from

anxiety 86-Amazement 37-Writing implement 89-Conceda

|40-Used in negation

BUGGESTIONS FOR SOLVING CROSS-WORD PUZZLES

Start out by Alling in the words of which you feel reasonably sure, These will give you a clue to other words crossing them, and they In turn to still others. A letter belongs in each white space, words starting at th numbered squares and running either horizontally or vertically or both.

(The solution of the above cross-word puzzle will appear in to-morrow's issue along with a new cross-word puzzle.)

Subjugation Complete. stonable cleric appears to have been Her subjugation of the impres-

fairly complete. Rumour must have been busy with the names of the two friends from the start, for we find Sterno writing to his daughter as early as February 23, review, and he simply sacrified poor 1767: "I do not wish to know who Le Gallienne. Among the cruel Surely some elephant was passing Was the busy fool who made your things he said was that Le Gal- by; (Draper): 'tis true that I have a mother uneasy about Mrs. lienne was the type of versifler who Or thoas mad herd of Gatflear friendship for her, but not to in- he might enjoy the opportunity of Have hoofed across that pretty page

was longing for you to die' so that swine ment enough to discern hers, and fatuation. I believe I have judg-

every woman's faults.".

The truth of this estimate is to some extent borno out by a perusal of the letters.

These, indeed, need not be taken too seriously... "My wife," Sterne writes in one of the later letters, "cannot, live long-she has sold all the provinces in France already- and I know not the woman I should like so well for a substitute ag yourself... Not Swift so loved his Stella; Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Sacharina, as I will love and sing thee, my wife elect"

Now this is emphatically not the language of a lover, and it may be doubted whether Sterne

was cap- able of so deep and abiding a pas- sion as that of a lover. There is much in his character that is genuinely likeable, but little that compels our respect. Perhaps, however, to apply to him Shakes-

"Also, epithet, peare's Yorlek!" would be beside the point. At least, he had the consolation of his unfailing tears.

poor

LE GALLIENNE,

HOW HIS FIRST VOLUME

WAS RECEIVED.-

Before Humbert Wolfe came on the scene Richard Le Gallienne

burglars, blackmailers and prison- To glut oneself with a succes- ers, resemble men and women of sion of mystery novels is a mis- our acquaintance. The old-fashion- take. They should be sandwiched ed sensational writer was so intent between, say, a re-reading of Gib on piling on the murders that he bon and of Johnson. Again, they forgot to make any of his charuc- should be selected with extreme ters live at all. Now it is the ob. care. There are even more inept ject of the thriller, to absorb us "shockers" оп the market than wholly, so that we forget the claims there are inept high-brow novels. of children who want assistance in Too many murders defeat their au- the matter of algebra, of wives who thors' object. Once we begin, wish for advice in the choice of Macbeth-like, to wade knee-deep in fabrics, of brothers and sisters who blood, our sensitive reaction to it need a fourth at tennis or bridge. is succeeded by tedium: Better a

We take thrillers on holiday in game of billiards, than this succes- was, perhaps, London's handsomest order to forget the whole civilised ston of horrors. One ghost may post. His looks, however, did not world. We read them, tog, at other give a man the creeps. A score help him when he first sought to times when we want to forget, for would become congenial company, make his reputation as a poet."

Sir Robert Donald, in an article one reason or another, life as it.ac. or just a nuisance, like cats miaw- tually is. The ordinary modern ing in the street. Far too often in "T.P.'s and Cassell's Weekly," novel is expressly intended to re- these coming craftsmen overreach tells how Lo Gallienne's first volume mind us of and to rub home facts themselves by letting their vivid of poetry was received. He was about ourselves that at such times Imaginations run riot. The pay an attractive personality with well- and in such moods we really for cho-analytic novelist spins out of moulded classic features, as delicate once try to forget. But, while we no material a long-winded disserta- and refined as a woman's. When wish for a complete change, we do tion on nothing. An inferior sen- he published his "English Poema" not wish this change to mean a sation writer heaps material on he may have hoped to take London denial of reasonable comforts. We material with such dire effect that by storm-repeat the Byronic pre- want clean Unen, good dinners, in the end he proves as exhaust- cedent, and become famous in a stimulating conversation, and, cx- ing and dull as reading of a Hat day. He reckoned without Bernard cept in theory, absence of danger, of deaths of people of whom we Shaw. G.B.5, or, rather, Corno di If we suddenly determined to cut have never heard.

Bassetto, was given the volume to

BRINGING UP FATHER.

mourning you. in verse.

you lie,

of thine; Le Gallienne made a gallant at- A nightingale the Minotaur hath

torn. tempt at a neat rejoinder as fol- Poor little book that only yesterday Fluttered new born in delicate ar-

lows:

ray,

How bruised and broken in the mud

So seems my little murdered book

this morn,

Bury it gently where no eye may

Bet,

And for its epitaph write C. di B.

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