Faksimile

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14. Littie Novels
box 35/11
992
TIME AND TIDE
Aueusr 16, 1929
got merits: of course it has; but what is best in it
potent in breaking down the child’s self-confidence,
seems to be but a sccondary reflection of the quality
as may also be more directly that of the teacher.
of its predecessor. 1 admit that I am tired of the
Nor can we exonerate nurses from their shrre in the
dawning sexual experiences of small boys, and
cnvironmental wrecking of the small child's nervons
do not find Nicky’s transformation into being a
system, though children rarely tell.
farmer particularly convineing; for the rest, one has
Dr. Thom defends the negativistic, contrary child,
had it already, and better, in Egg''. Anyone who
whose mother stigmatises him as “impossible“’. He is
has not readEgg'’ I should advise so to do; about
certainly made, not born, and can be reconditioned by
Nicky, I feel quite tepid.
loyalty, and by the parent, if necessary, shouldering
These three are the best of the bunch: with the
the blame, instead of, as so often happens, taking it
other two, one passes into book making—book making
out of the child for his own incompetence.
by very efficient and slick performers. With Mimset)
Dr. Thom has an apt way of expressing things.
und Mr. Raikes Mr. Maxwell has taken a great deal
He says of a child who plays on his mother’s feelings
of trouble: the subject, intrinsically interesting, is
by refusing food that he is “dramatizing the meal
surely extremely near to the one that he handled,
hour''. Speaking of anger repressed for fear of
many years ago, in The Silence of Dean Maitland'
punishment, which has accumulated to breaking point,
his first big success. 1 do not remember“ The Silence
he says it is like some infernal machine, it explodes
of Dean Maitland' very well, at this distance; but if
at a most inopportune time?'; and of a maladjusted
1 am not mistaken, it was a study of a man who
child he says he is “a time-consuming blot on the
presented to the world a personality inferentially
family life'.
superior to his own, and by dint of consistent artifice,
Undoubtedly it is a book to read.
became the thing he acted. So here, Oswald Raikes
M.M.
carries about with him a picture of the perfect man
he is not: acts, at every crisis, not as is “natural'
to him, but as that perfect man would do; until, at the
last, the problem of which is the “real'' Mr. Raikes,
and which the sham, is insoluble even to himself. The
Critic’s Commentary
detail of the narrative is of course carried off with
great neatness and aplomb; but there is something
Being Some Notes from a Reviewer'’s Note-Book.
fundamentally commonplace and superficial in its
brainwork which prevents one’s ever being deeply
William Dampier. Clennell Wilkinson. (The Golden
interested in Oswald or in anybody else in the tale.
Hind Series. Bodley Head. 128. 6d.) Mr. Milton
It ought to be interesting, such a theme; it evidently
Waldman, as editor of The Golden Hind Series, has
interests Mr. Maxwell; but one feels he sees little more
done us good service in providing a really full and
of it than the surface.
reliable biography of Captain William Dampier“Pirate
Dance, Little Gentleman, is the study of a cad, by
and Hydrographer“, probably the greatest English
himself: the autobiography of a successful gigolo. It
adventurer between the last of the Elizabethans and
is a supremely vulgar book. As a short story, Henry
the sailors of the mid-eighteenth century. He was not
really a pirate, and he was much more than a hydro¬
St. Aubin’s self-satisfied picture of his own meanness
grapher. He could not manage his crews well; he was
and commonness, of his successful exploitation of a
perpetually disgruntled with life; he was something of
series of infatuatedly silly, rich, elderly women, might
an intellectual; he was not quite a gentleman; and he
have had an ironic value; but there is far too much
just missed discovering Australia. But he had many
of it here to be borne. The taste of it is nauseating:
adventures; he circumnavigated the globe; he wrote
und the taste is the same, throughout.
about his travels with acumen, and Mr. Wilkinson has
written about him with engaging enthusiasm, apprecia¬
tion and gusto.
The Poet and the Lunatics. G. K. Chesterton.
(Cassell. 78. 6d.) A detective story has as much right
NERVOUS PROBLEMS
to be sacred as it has to be profane. There is no
reason why a poet should not solve mysteries by his
OF CHILDHOOD
comprehension of spiritual values; there is no reason
why Mr. Chesterton should not attribute to the
The Everyday Problem of the Everyday Child. Dr.
poet his own personal religious predilections. But
Thom. (D. Appleton & Co. 108. 6d.)
the essential condition is that the sacred story should
be as logical as the profane is, and that a religious
Dr. Thom well deserves the American prize for the
joke should have as much point as an unreligious one.
best book about children. There is no doubt that they
There is nothing wrong with the motive of his short
have studied the mental hygiene of the child in
stories, but sometimes there is something a little too
America more than we have here, and it is from this
loose in their construction. Their tale is adorned more
point of view that the Everyday Problem os the
than their moral is pointed. Still—Mr. Chesterton
Everyday Child is written, though the physical
could not write eight stories without giving them some
causes of nervous troubles are not overlooked, as
grace or ingenuity, and several of these have both.
seemed to be the case in some of the American elinics
Pale Warriors. David Hamilton. (Cape. 78. 6d.)
which I visited last year.
An ingenious but somewhat stale idea imperfectlj¬