1938-03-05 — Page 14

10

THE

HONGKONG

TELEGRAPH. SATURDAY,

MARCH 5, 1988.

Mr. Houghton Likes

Mr. Houghton's Novel

EAR Claude Houghton.——

I have novor met you. But I have been an Interested Follower of your career-nino, novels in the last twelve years or 50. novels of distinction. always novels of promise,

Often Almost

You are one of the half-dozen younger writers whose books I look forward to with hope-and trembling. I soon forgot your last story, Christina, But I still re- member Chaos is Come Again.

And

now I have just finished your latest and most ambitious tale, Strangers (Collins, 8s, ed.). I was settling down to my type- writer to review it when I remem

པསས bered I was too late. For you have already reviewed it yourself.

In The Bookseller, under the modest beading, A Few Words About My Now Novel," you say:

My

new novel is not just the familiar story of husband, wife and mistress. It is that, and its treatment is such that suspense becomes cumulative with the turning of every page, but it is much more than that. Here is the truth about many a marriago. And every character in this book is a world. You do not watch these worlds, you enter them. Above all, you enter Grantham's secret Interior world, You become this man. You understand his strange love for his wife, his imaginative love for his children, his passionate love for his mistress.

You wait on tiptec, as he docs, for the coming of the inevitable hour in which the two women will meet. But you do not-and cannot foresee the circum- stances of that meeting. And it is because you become Grantham and know, therefore, those aspects of his complex nature of which wife and mis- tress know nothing, that you realise why this book is called Strangers.

different

Each looks out on a

world, Ench seeks a different kind Each makes a of happiness. different demand from destiny, From the Arst page there is the nimost uncanny sensation that you are entering the world of each character in turn. You be

"You wait on tiptoe'...'

"

come involved in a drama - a drama which penetrates to the depths of your own emotional life.

Well, well, welli We have grown accustomed to novelists reviewing each other's books. But you have added a new excitement and a new terror-to an already CX- tremely confusing game.

A colleague of mine, seeing your "few words" lying on my desk, read them through and whistled before he said, Of all the sweet nervel

4

That's how I feel, too. Professional jealousy? No. I just hate to see a novellst-espeel- ally a novelist of your significance -huckstering his own wares.

Don't do it again, dear Mr. Houghton. Leave publlelty to the publicity men. They know how.... And, incidentally, it isn't a good review. I didn't wait on tiptoe for "the coming of the inevitable hour."

I was a long way from being involved in a drama which

penetrated to the depths of my emotional life.

Too often you make your alim, red-haired and quite unbelievable heroine, Crystal, say things liku this:

"I wish thoro wore something I could do something incredible, something unheard of, anything— to prove what you mean to me. Limits just don't exist where you're concerned. I'd love to prove that! I'd love to!

1

Believe me, only your Crystal could talk such blah.

And then, again, there is that far too forbearing woman, Hilda. "Now. In a

dcop

sense, she became greater than herself, a link with eternal forces

servant

and д symbol of the Future."

When husbands feel like that about their wives-or wives about their husbands -it's time for them to wake up and live...

Now and then you are your old self for pages at a time. Flashes

wit. of

• Flashes of social conscience. Flashes of irony. And two of your minor characters; Clare and Barradale, are splendidly done.

But, on the whole, Strangers is another disappointment to me. Every now and then you stop to tell us what has happened to Grantham and Hilds and Crystal. But we never see it happening in between.

luck-and Better

1 shorter, lenner, less pretentious book -next time. But don't let your herolnos lean out of the window in They their pyjamas so often. might catch cold.

Yours still hopefully, in spite of everything.

logen Pinkett

The SNAPSHOT GUILD

The S

Picturing Children Indoors

Floodlight from almost directly overhead makes the chlid'e figura stand

out agrinat a background of rich shadow. The ploture was enapped when the subject had forgotten there was a camera pear, DARENTS usually think of out- the flood bulbs, and as soon as ho doors and sunny summer days as is absorbed in them, and uncon- the proper place and time for pictur-aclous of the camera-snap goes the ing children, and once this was true. shutter and the picture is made!

There is a variety of lighting ar Before the advent of fast films and olectric light bulbs espacially de-rangements one can use on child ple turos. For a cheerful, joyous effect. alguod for amateur photography, everything is tus pleture should be daytime was the only time anap 11ght in tone, and thore should be shooters could work. Today that is even ilumination, with no deep no longer the case.

Bhadows. Iłowover, when a dramatie Nowadays, pleasing child pictures effect is dentrod, ilumination can be may be taken faside the home either restricted to the child's face and by day or night, and more amateurs hair, with everything else in deop are taking them. This is partly be shadow. This tends to give the im cause the home provides an idont sot-pression of a very small child in a ting for pictures ons wants to keep, very largo room; sometimes an of and partly because the photographer feet of loneliness which is more ap can control ble Hght to make pic pealing than if the picture were

bright and carefree.- tures more interesting.

Beautiful "bigh-koy" effects can bo obtained with the child on a win. dow-sent whore daylight diffuses through the curtains, and bright floodlight inaldo ao that there are

The modern large-sized amateuri flood bulbs are so powerful that the camera worker can put two of them Ju reflectors three to four feet from his subject, and take anapshots, as ho would outdoors, with an ordinary no dark areas or maande of shadow, box camera. The camora 18. of course, landed with supersensitive Alm and its lens set at the largest opening. Other cameras can be used at 1/25 second shutter speed and

.5 or 1.11 lens opening.

Tho chlid's clothing should be light in color. Good balancing of light will give a pleturo that is almost all white and lighter tones of gray, with just enough shadow here and thera for accents. "Backlighting," an from Ability to take anapshots like this the window, can also be obtained is a great bolp in obtaining natural, with artificial fight, a bulb being unposed child pictures. It is no long-placed behind the child no that the er necessary to tako "time" ex- hair becomes a bright, allky halo.

Start today to koop a picluro posures or to tell the child to "hold

very all." Now his toys can be diary of your children. placed in the circle of light cast by

+

John van Guilder.

1937

ACHIEVEMENTS

We....

carried over 70,000 passengers. Flaw over 6,000,000 miles and carried over 7,000,000 ton miles of traffic

commissioned the biggest floot of commercial flying-boats in the world. .... made ten crassings of the North Atlantic Ocoan in accordance with a pro-arranged timetablo

.... brought into operation the All-Air Empire Mall Programme which, when time brings it Into true perspectivo, will be recognised as a fandmark in the history of civilisation

made the first commercial flying-boat flight between England and New Zealand, 13,000 miles away-the Empire air route of

to-morrow

.... established the first British trans-ocean air service between a British possession and the United States of America

IMPERIAL

AIRWAYS

Booking and information from Imperial Airways (Far Eait) Lid, Peninsula Hotel, Hongkong or the Company's Booking Agents, Tel. 50005.

S

WAR WITNESS

THE TREE OF GERNIKA

By G. L. Steer (Hodder and Stoughton, 123. Cd.)

Franco-losca-the-war-ho-will lose it because, after Gundara- Jara, he turned aside from the main front in search of easy and spectacular victory in the North,

His Italians had had enough. They would not face Madrid again. But in the North the Basque pro- vinces. notoriously ill-equipped, seemed to his generals there for the taking. And the capital of the provinces was rich Bilbao, the third city of Spain.

In three weeks he would take Bilbao and, by swift victory, re- store the shaken morale of his armies.

Retreat from Bilbao

He took it, but the taking cost him not three weeks but nearly three months. In which time the Republican new model army took shape and gathered strength and became at itself to take the offen- sive at Brunete.

cor-

Mr. Steer, as the "Times respondent, was with the Basques throughout that herofe struggle of a peaceful, religious, democratic people to defend its liberty against impossible

ruthless odda and brutality.

He tells its history in what ho modeally describes as a "feld study of modern war." It is one of the most vivid and most moving stories ever written by an eye- witness of war.

It is a faithful record of observed facts. But it is also a tale told with and with understanding passion; with admiration and with scorn and leathing where those aro due (of the scorn His Majesty's Government gets full share for its the contemptible altitudo over

blockade"). With humour, too, for comedy and tragedy are always intertwined.

ia a fragment of ong tho picture the retreat

'cinturon," the last line round the doomed city of Bilbao.

Tero

from

We stumbled up the hill, and when we found the trenches Hilfered man- algh with earth, wo jumped out of them and walked carelessly across tha open. The men pushed their berets to the back of their heads-It was very hot

Acroplanes passed over

machine-gunning. but we did not give a damn. We were retreating. We went back steadily, in little groups with their rifles dangling upside down from their shoulders, through the curtain of high explostre

We passed our old battery. All the crew had gone except for an officer and three men who asked us why We everyone was moving backward. grinned and didn't say anything.

"We were not demoralised. We were not retreating in disorder. We were not retreating in order. Wo were re- treating. We just plodded on without caring, with int backs.

When the battle was far to the rear.

I realised that I had a headache, sore eyes and stupid unresponsive ears. All that I had noticed so far was the hard- ness of my tongue."

15

There a snmple. Are you sur- prised that when I opened The Tree of Gernika I read on and on till two in the morning and then had to drive myself reluctantly to -bed from a dying fire? W.N.E.

DREAM VERSES. by D. C. Cuthbertson (Encas Mackay, Stirling. 3 d.). Forty- three poems of tho Bcottish country- side-bens and glens, drove ronds and heather paths. Full of charm and the promise of spring.

ROADS AND OTHER

T

A Chinese carving of the 17th century, from "Arl Without Epoch," another of the astonishing Phaidon -Press-art-books-(Allen-and. Umoin, 75. ed.).

THRILLS

-MAN LEMMY CAUTION 1: out and about again in Peter Cheyney's Cun Ladles Kill? (Collins, Ts. Od.). moving a little less swiftly, and using his wits rather more alertly. Anyone not yet tired of "tough guy" English w like this a great deal.

Jefferson Tarjcon's Mystery in White (Collins, 7s. Cd.) is a jolly yarn!

Here you have mixed company from a snow-bound train gathered in a deserted house, where tea 13 all ready on the table as some com- pensation for the corpses that pop up briskly at short intervals.

Planting a corpse rigged out as Mephistopheles to be found in a police car at Scotland Yard is the engaging whim of E. C. R. Loras in The Devil and the C.ID. (Collins,

P. E. IL, 7s. Od.). Exciting.

The Labour Spy Racket

By Leo Huberman (Gollancz, 78. Ed.)

10 United States workers the Wagner Act is vital. It gives them "the right to self- organisation, to form, join or assist Labour organisations, to bargain collectively through representa- tives of their own choosing."

But even this simple language defeats the United States cm- ployers, Precisely to deny the workers the rights to which they are entitled by the Wagner Act, the employera maintain the pro- digious racket which this book sa graphically describes.

Mr. Huberman estimates that United States Big Buntneas, scon hero at its nordid worst, apends £10,000,000 a year on payments to detectivo agencles.

At one time it was reckoned that there was a spy in every union branch, many of them holding key

positions, every one of them under- mining the work of building up Trade Unionisma,

Active union workers lose their jobs and are blacklisted every- whore-because of aples. Workers' unions are wrecked and replaced by company unions-the work of sples. Branch funds are lost, hope. less strikes encouraged-agala by aples in the roles of thieves and agents provocateur.

Mr. Huberman is merciless in his exposure of a revolting racket which begins with "written re- ports of factory conditions" and ends with brutal torture and sud- den.death.

ALL FOR A KISS

£20 To Loyal Wife's Family

Pound notes have been sent to Hull-by-sym- pathisers all over the country to pay the £1 fine of William Arthur Altoft, saved from fourteen days in jail by his wife's kiss.

When Mrs. Altoft kissed her husband in court after he had been sentenced, Mr. J. R. MacDonald, the stipendiary magistrate, exclaimed: "I can't stand that!" rescinded the sentence for striking an unemployment board official- and imposed the fine instead.

More than £20 in notes, including a woman's old age pension of 10s., has already been received for the Altofts. The fine has been paid, and the rest will be used to help the family.

OXFORD FELL DOWN

ON THESE WORDS

WOMEN proved themselves the best spellers in yesterday's broadcast spelling bee between Oxford and Harvard and Rad- cliffe universities.

They were Elaine Fraser, an American-paychology student; Penelope Knox, scholar at Somerville; and Miranda Tallents, daughter of the B.B.C. Controller of Public Relations.

One man, Arthur Cantor (U.S.A.), equalled them out of the teams of 16.

A

The proceedings were broadcast to listeners on both sides of the Atlantic.

30 SECONDS A WORD The spelling masters toss up for the right to put the first word, and the winner puts a word to the leader of the opposing team.

If he spells it correctly his spell Ing master puis another word to the leader of the opposite team, and so on.

over

at

The contestants could hear every some words must have surprised word spoken in the opposing studio many listeners.

CONCED and acting as comperes, or spelling

for the first The gong counded American ex- use the musters, to

when Malcolm Perkins, pression, were Mr. Thomus Wood- mistake roote, for England, and Mr. Paul Harvard law scholar, spelt loneliness without the first "e" Peter Wood, Wing, for America.

son of Lord Halifax, then stumbled ever labyrinthine.

John

American Irwin, ar

corollary, Balliol, fell down and was followed by Ronald Kean, of Blackpool (now at Harvard), who got into difficulty over longevity.

Michael Walford, himself with a black eye from Rugger and deputis- Should a speller tall the same ing for Prince Obolensky, injured at word is put back to the next person Rugger, falled over mulligatawny in the team presenting it and con- and isoscele the words they could tinued until the correct spelling is

Others, with given. One point is given for each not spell, were Conrad Cherry (Ox- word correctly spelled.

ford), anonymity> Malcolm Perkins, The Oxford Dictionary was the U.S.A palfreys; Norma Naumyth, standard for the England team and U.S.A. truncheon; John Willy, pro- Webster's for the American alde.sident of the Q.U.D.S9., embarrass- Thirty seconds were allowed for ment. each "opeller.

Lord Oxford and Asquith, for The American team. speaking Oxford, was unlucky. He spelled from Boston, won the bee with 20"gambogo" correctly In the Ameri- but not ac→ points. Oxford, at Broadcasting can way, "gamboogo," House, gained 24 points.

cording the Oxford Dictionary, by Considering that most of those which he had to stand. taking port have already had about: Perhaps tlio champion efforts were Wiity's "rakhir," and bla £2,000 spent on their education the Mr. BAND shinig ignorance displayed over American opposite's Archite

But he never lets his own hat indignation run away from the mass of facts provided by the Benate Civil Liberties Committee, where the truthfulness of these revelations was admisted in aworn testimony.

W.

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