1938-08-04 — Page 22

10

OMETHING like a reign of terror provalis in the household; Father has ro- discovered his hobby, "Terror" may be an over- statement, since I overheard Miss Eight-Year-Old any to Muster Six-Year-Old:

"Do you think he is really awfully cross about his silly old saw, or is he just showing of? "

Showing off That is all that the Righteous Wrath of an Of fended Parent means to the modern generation.

And then she added, more as a matter of information than of concern:

"Did we over dig it up after that treasure-hunt?

How. I ask you, can A Kenn really do justice to carpentry as a hobby, when his family buries his saw, and, most probably, hammer and chisels as

well?

That is why the Jove of our Innily Olympus has been thundering and

lightning

Around the

house for the past 24 Because I de- houra,

free cided, having

A

week-end, to revive, in face of violent oppost- tion from those who have to do the cleaning- up, my hobby of Making Things.

Fin

THE

HONGKONG

AUGUST TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY,

1938.

"Spend my time in a deck chair thinking of Something Really Energetic."

ANYTHING

BUT-

Collapsible tables, for instance. Most Ingen!- ous, but able to col lapse by accident rather than design. And of

A course, painting them.

bil colour- slapdash. I admit, but ful. Indeed, when visitors go into

whiteb I ORI room in allowed to pleas myself, they shade their eyes. and murmur

courageous

politenesses Loiours."

about

am

A I can not find the tools brustics. { suppose I shall have to find a new hobby [or the week-end. Or, more likely. I shall spend all my time lying in a deck-chair thinking of Somethin Really Energetic.

And no one who knows nic will dare to suggest gardening. Or golf. or talking, or canering, or any of the other

"nothing-like-it-old- "diverslons of my more bois- man rerous irlanda.

distinction which I The one share with Bernard Shaw is his recreation, quoted in Who's Who "Anything except spart.”

But in my zest for carpentry. I am in good company.

one evening, wandering round with An Intense look on his face and a pill-box on his arm. In the pill- 170x Was

ho was Q bug which assiduously trying to coux to bite him

On my arm, in a misguided ox- periment, it produced an instan- taneous blister; on his, none at all. And he explained that he had spent his holidays endeavouring to Het bitten, sleeping in bug-ridden hovels in the Balkans, the Near Eust, Russia. Spain and elsewhere. but never once finding a breed of bug which would take to him. Now he is going off to Mexico. Maybe his bug-baiting" will end there.

It is a moot point as to whether tint should be classed as thing but sport."

H.

G

any-

WELLS Roes off to Prague for the meeting of the Is International P.E.N. Club. He indulging in

of his greatest houbles, one which has taken him arduous journeys round

on

one

the

When my friend Professor world, the fostering of PEN. of Lancelot Hogbon is not indulging which

la main hobby of writing best-president, sellers on science, be makes furni- ture.

And very modern furniture It Is. no furnished his cottage in Devon and a bungalow in his private wood with 1 depks, cabinets, chairo, tables and so on.

Mmado, elegantly, in an

It

OST of them he had

hour or so, because was not so much carpentry nà

Ho ructural engineering,

had discovered that sugar-boxes were mass-produced in dead accurate sizes. So it was a case of a few alls, three-plywood and mathe- matics.

Because in his schooldays be was "made to chase a parcel of air wrapped up in leather" round a football pitch, he, too, incorrigibly, belongs to the Shavian category of

anything but sport."

Professor J. B. B. Haldane classi- fies his hobby as gardening." but

He has another which might be de- scribed as "being bitten by bed

bugs."

he $15 the International

But it is part of his bigger hobby of meeting people, arguing with them, provoking them and convert- lng them to his all-prevailing pur- pose of international co-operation

Sometimes he will adjourn the argument, to the room which he hay had specially equipped at the bottom of his garden for table- tennis.

At the age of 71, he has a youth- ful.zest for table-tennis. I wonder if we should blackball him on those grounds from our "Anything But Sport Club "?

One person who most certainly Every qualifies is Osbert Sitwell. weck-und is a busy one for him. and his hobby-" Prophecy and waiting for the end.

Presumably he makes a pro- phecy and walts all week-end for the end. And when he wakes up on Monday and refutes his own prophecy, he sits down and makes another one. Anyway, it is better than cheating yourself at patience cards.

Brother Sacheverell Sitwell in-

I met him at the Royal Society duiges in "model acroplanos, plats

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regionaux, improvisation and the bull-ring."

10 SKILLles

One week-end I went down with

Barrie the late Sir James indulgo his secret vice with A. P. Herbert in the alley of a riverside pub at Hammer- amitii.

TULIAN HUXLEY has onu hobby which is after his own heart--bird-watch- Ing. But he is addicted to another, clarades, So are Lady Astor and her week-end parties at Cliveden.

But one of the principal week- end hobbles of scientists in crime

One Sunday I was visiting a din- tinguished scientist, who shall be nameless. We were out walking. doop in discussion of a new dis- covery, when he suddenly stopped beside a tangled brake of bushes, looked around cautiously and in a "That's said, stagey whisper where I burled last Sunday's body." Just as though it were a reast Jomt which had gone bad.

Every Sunday morning, it turned out, be committed an imaginary

murder in the best "thriller" tra- dition and spent the rest of the day convicting himself.

Better'n crosswords," ho 49- sured me,

The Atheneum Club is full of potential murderera, detectives and Hanging Judges." And tho bishops are no exceptions.

ů

One evening, after dinner there, group which included a famous medical knight, « physiologist, a psychologist, a pathologist, a bar- rister, a chemist, and myself, ap- pointed ourselves judge, fury and executioners

certain of

public enemies. beyond tha law but morally criminal.

And the expert knowledge of each of the specialists was pooled Lo dispose of them in such a way that murder would never have been suspected, much less, accord- ing to the lawyer, detected.

They were all "thriller fans" determined to out-do their favour- lle authors,

W

BICH 1s пп idea--- If that saw is not resur- rected within the next few hours, I shall commit an nagtuary murder and confound myself with my own clues.--The Deck Chair Murder.

But, in the meantime, I make a resolution for the week-end in which I hope you all can join My recreation is going to be "Any- thing but WORK.”

OUR BRITISH CROSSWORDS

12

ACROSS

1 The cad can be made to separate

(0).

4 Given apparently upproving of

debt (U),

The sound of backward spirits

10 This saintly day comes in July

(B).

musical

12 Hungarinn

(3).

composer

13 Hard up and with debts too (9).

15 A constellation (3)

10 Relation (5).-

17 Not even chance? (4)..

19 A light musical note? (3).

21 Is this to come out (3).

24 European capital (4).

25 Useful to a ship

hended (6).

20 A little blow (3).

even

{kh-

29 Plenty suggesting something

a cakewalk (0).

like a

32 Praise (6).

33 "Did slope" (anng.) (B).

34 Occupation for a royal graduate

in the kitchen (0)

35 Unmelodious instruction to the orchestra to hurry up and start

(8).

30 An egg is enough clue by the

look of it (0).

DOWN

1 Pudding that suggests selling

a lot of fish cheap (8).

2 "She hurts" (anag) (0),

3 An enormous number do not

do so much reckoning (9).

Found in long-bottled wine (5).

6 A 'Varsity don perhaps (5). 7 Former in former days (0).

110

18

Ri

126

8 Leave off (0).

11 This old deity was a head and

nothing more (0),

14 This is Hindustani (4)

17 The tall of this bird

Is up- parently an attraction to others (4).

18 He makes dear dopes or road

speed (8).

20 A northem girl (4).

22 Irritation at inactivity perhaps

(0).

23 Adieult time for driving a

car (8).

20 Wager about everything for the

dance (0).

27 Highwayman of old (0)... 30 Material for the military doubt.

less. (6).

.....

31 Just what is wanted (5).

YESTERDAY'S SOLUTION

|0 UTOFSIGHT GR U B GTAULUM 08 AM I LANCE PRACTICAL ETHERERA ES L]

LASTWORD RADIO GILIIN VIHETENS F LEISURE "RAUCO U S ABN

|REVEA SWEATER CONGEAL

HOINS GEARCABE

UTTS BOIL UNFEELING BOGUE

ETTUN DEEFHE LAST HEADHUNTER

Eminent Victorian Sportamen, A modern hotel fresco-from John Folliergill's new book, "Confessions of an Innkeeper" (Chatto and Windus. 8. (4.),

THE BEST

THRILLER YET

H

ERE is the best news for many months for detec- tive story lovers, Michael Innes, going on from good to better, has put himself, with his third book, Lament for a Maker (Gollancz, 78. Gd.), right among the masters.

It is the sort of novel you can read with joy, even if you do not give a hoot for who killed whom. Which meania that the clues are not just loose enda sticking out, but a cunningly integrated part of a story that, above all, bas character and substance.

Six narrators give you the strange

Music Hall

UALIFIED doubly by experl-

ence and resourceful research. M. Willson Disher has given us by far the best book on the British music-hall yet written-Winkdes And

(Batsford, Champagne 12s, Od.).

Harmonie rallies in taverns were tho origing of this peculiarly national and strongly democratie form of entertain- ment. The great Grimaldi in his last days would be carried plek-a-back into abar-parlour to regalo the 'customers with his old clown songs. Supper zooms, such as Evans's in Covent Garden

National

history of a Scottish luird, living fear- obsessed-come say mud-in' a rat- ridden ruin of a castle. Death comes, There are horror and shrewd common seling, lively humour, legend of the erlinmer kind and love faredoomed, nii culminating in a grand triple-cross.

Pardon the unwonted enthusiasm. But if 1033 given us another detective novel like this, it will be a remarkable yest

Commendable too in a more single. minded way is Neal Shepherd's Death Walks Softly (Constable, 78. 04.). Chief point about this is its satisfy. ingly complete technical details, ex- teraling to a conscientious plan which cuines near to gluing the whole thing uway.

I like this new author's nimest exaggerated fair-mindedness and hope to read more about his engaging Chlet Inspector Napper Tandy.

Two reports an aimple thrillern, Max Ballinarsh continues capably in the early John Buchan tradition with a tale of plots melde Nazi Germany, Indigo Destb (Michael Josepit, 78. 04.). And Bulldog Drummond on Dart- moor described ITA

orightinted by Sapper and told by Gerard Fairle Hodder and Stoughton, 76. Od.), is pretty well indistinguishable from the real thing which we had thought ended by Sapper's death,

P. E. II.

German

v. Slay

NCE upon a time a book on afterwards other step towards the the dashing of

Czech and epeelally built theatre, first of which

German In Bohemia and Moravia in London was the Canterbury.

would have scemed, for the ordinary Engilshman, an acade- mie study of a remote theme. To-day, unhappily, he knows that it holds imminent dangers for all Europe, and for him, too.

The chairman," waiters with trays af drinks and a pot-house flavour per- aisted in the old "Mogul" (the Middle- rex, now the Winter Garden Theatre), the Pavilion and the Oxford, unt respectability and "tono" raised the status of variety, thanks to Charles Morton, Sir Oswald Stoll and the "family" atmosphere they created,

MI Disher covers the vast field thoroughly, especially the personality side, from Bam Cowell to Billy Ben- ett, and records many odd facta. For example, I knew that Little Tich hed six fingers on each hand, but not that George Black used to turn the

· Hrundle of a roundabout, or that Harry Champion wrote "Mo Old Brown Son" his father's funeral

An antoniliing profusion of illustra- tions-performers, old songs old scenes-la perhaps the Volume's greatest virtue: and that is not to detry the lively writing of a book which neither over-Idealises nor moralises, In not, the reader is at the music-hall with the author all tha time.

P. L. M.

SPAIN plain

N exhaustive and well-docu-

Anued survey of the Spanish

13

situation

by the provided Duchess of Atholl in Searchlight on Spain (Penguin Books, Gd.).

It is much more than an account of the war, for the author goes back to the causes of the present bloodshed and attempts also to foresee its ultl- mate offcols.

In en admimble summing-up, "What It Means to Us," the Duchess pleads for full support for the Spanish Gov- emment and the ending of the so- called non-intervention which she, along with other realists, agrees has been a concealed form of intervention in favour of Franco.

T.

Obviously the work of a motorist with a wide knowledge and n pas- slonats love of his country is This England of Ours, by Harold W. Eley (Newnes, 38. Gd.). A friendly book not a guide in the usually accepted Echo, but rather reminiscences of Journeys made to the most interesting corners of the shires.

"TELEGRAPH”

WAR MAP

A specially prepared

map of the Northern

War Zone in China.

15% by 11 inches,

printed on art paper.

So Elizabeth Wiskemann's book, Czechs and Germans (Oxford Univer alty Press, 13s. Gd.), is timely-and valuable as well. Because its main theme is the all-important, one that this "Sudeten question" did not be gin with Herr Hiller and Nazi pro- paganda: but goes back before Nazism, before the founding of the Republie. It is the newest phase in conflict of centuries between German and Slav "in the bosom of a single state."

On such a subject, at such a moment, One can hardly look for Impartiality. even in a bock published under the ausplete" of the Royal Institute of In- ternatiount Affairs,

Mika Wiskemann fa candid.

She does not pretend to be impartial. She does not hide her strong sym- pathies und antipathies, her likes and dislikes. She frankly argues the CzecİL, case, not only in this grim Juncture. but through the centuries. Buch can- dour, and the effort to be as fair ns may be to the other side, are no bad substitute for objectivity in a historian. Anyway, here in a massing of fact about the past and the present of the most uneasy racial frontier of Europe, complied with a painstaking industry which is beyond praise. The facts are of prime importance: and this is the first English attempt to set them out clearly and in some perspective.

FICTION

W. N. E.

Novels

Na world of polite, cheerful, kind-heartod and sadly liot ant novelists, what a pleasure it is to meet James Hunloy again. He may be rude. Ho may be gloomy. He may be metelless. But he knows his stuff.

Its new long novel, Hollow Eca (John Lane, 108. 04.), is the terrify Ing log of a troopship during the War, And he would have been delighted, tó hear the sigh of relief that I gave whed the men felt those quny-side cobbles under their foot at last,

The A.10 had called in darkness under sealed orders. She had embarked soldiers for an Unknown Destination, She was just disembarking. thom off Gallipoll when the moon came up and guns spat from unsealeable cliffa, (IÈ was the wrong bay, anyhoyy.), »

So sha picked up as many as possible of the wounded and becñino a hospital ship, a death shilp, apiteljibg and tossing asylum. Until, weeks Inter, lightened of many of her burdens, die renched port.

It is a heart-breaking story, told with remarkable realism, vigour and skil Too often Mr. Hanley's old fault of affectation pulls you up sharply: In the mkidio of hammering a brass, tack bome ho stops for a "literary" recita tion. But, for all that, Hollow Sea in a terriile tale.

An ex-sailor himself, the author is at home with the crow all the while- from the brusque captain, who knows war is madness anyway, to the stolid look-out man, dreaming always of his wife and child back in Rochdale. And the suffering, sweating soldiers packed below? They remain invisible, and dumb. Out of sight but naver for a mament out of mind.

The sense of detachment, the con- centration of the crew, on their work, adds the final touch of conviction to the story. That is why I sighed with relief when the man landed.

As they tumbled ashore, I could feel them, thinking, "Why we had to take those podr dovila out cound and bring them back shatterell, why we had to nose. through those minefields and dodge those, submarines, heaven-or, rather, Authority-only knows. But anyhow, the job is done....*

EARS

ago

Q

Francis Stuart wrote story called The Coloured Dome. A clear, shining, miraculous tale of Ireland. If you happen to have read it, the memory of It will delight you still. When I saw Mr. Stuart's naihe on the cover of Julle (Collins, 7a. Bd.), the old excitement rose in mo again. And, though there is nothing iniraculou about this novel, I commend it to you ́ as a strangely compelling tale of en during love..

On her way to England from Africa, Julle is attracted to Ben Gokibery, n penniless young Jew. Later in London she goes to work in his office: ho has become fire anscasor-and a criminal. But her love for him holds, oven when he is sentenced to jail for seven years,

She will wait for Ben. She may feel a passing antimental attachment for that Irish poet, Mick. But she and Ben are one another's destiny. So she will wait for him. What else could she do?

It may sound like a fairy tale. Be- lleve it or not. Mr. Stuart makes it come true.

LIBRARY LIST_AL,

National Provincial, by Leities Cooper (Gollancz, 88. Gd.). In which you may live for while the life of

a Northern city.

Everslade, by W. B. Maxwell (ilutchinson, 81. Od.). The third volume in the author's large-scale fictional survey, "Men and Women.“ Death Burns the Candle, by Ralph Trevor (Wright and Brown, Ye, Bd.). Sacred Bouta Sen pearls. Robbery, Revenge. And Thrills.

FACT

R.P.

Low Again: A Pageant of Polities. by David Low (The Cresset Prem, 08.). A superb collection of cartoons by Colonci Blimp'a, creator,

Memories and Reflections, by Den Tilatt (John. Long, 6s.). Popular edition of thio fighting nuto- blography of a Labour veteran.

A History of Cricket, by 11. 6. Altham and E. W. Swanton (Allen and Unwin, 8s. 6d.). The Complete Oricketer-in a revised edition.

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