1 DECEMBER 1928, Page 28

Fiction

Dragons, Cossacks, Whales, and Detectives

The Dreadful Dragon of Hay Hill. By Max Beerbohm. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) The Cluny Problem. By A. Fielding. (Collins. 7s. 6d.)

IF Mr. Max Beerbohm's little fantasy, The Dragon of Hay Hill

appears now in an unlimited edition, it does not renounce the severe elegance of paper, print, and binding so necessary to its remote and delicate air of amusement. The frontispiece,

which reveals the large-eyed Thia reproving the terrified Thol in the year 39,000 B.C. is in itself exhilarating. This grave and

airy chronicle. this queer half-wistful account of the Time of the Greater Stress in the green homeland when the dragon breathed from the summit of Hay Hill, and of the degeneration that followed his overthrow, will seem to many merely one of Mr. Beerbohm's elusive 'exercises in teasing humour and mischievous decorum of style ; a more meditative reader, crushing the suave absurdity " against his palate fine," may savour a core of pathos and irony and even the sting of a moral.

For the necessity of the Dragon and the high state of danger in the scheme of things has always been recognized by- poets and the better kind of philosophers. However you take it, the smiling and evasive tale is charming.

The mind that can pass easily from this urbanity to the limitless steppes of Gogol and his carousing quarrelling people

may be considered fairly -well educated. • We have all heard by this time that Gogol is the father of the Russian novel, and it is occasionally murmured that he has points of resem- blance with Dickens. The author of Dead Souls has indeed more than a little in common with the disquieting and daemonic genius who so uneasily fitted himself to the Victorian convention. But in Mirgorod, Mrs. Constance Garnett,

devoted and admirable translator, gives us the Gogol of the folk tale tradition, of the Ukraine he loved with childhood's nostalgia, the romantic Gogol, all gaiety and melancholy and

leaping movement. Here -is the great exultant story of " Taras Bulba " and his sons. Flashing of silver heels in the

war dances, rushing of mighty stallions with red-clad riders, massacre and festival, birds and flowers and fragrances of the steppe, cool dark flowing of the Dnieper, Homeric combats, chanted refrains in battle, pride, scorn, comradeship, tortured

death and defiance of it, all the insolence and invincibility of the Zaporozhtsy—this is a thing merciless and splendid MC wind and flame. But the gentle study called "-Old--world

Landowners" almost sobs with tenderness, for in love or wrath Gogol is at one with all the creatures he contemplates. As with Dostoevsky, as with Tchehov, as with Tolstoy, though not so convincedly, we murmur in reading Gogol : " This, too, is Russia." For the Russian novelists seem to be identified With their race -as are no other writers On earth. - - '

Mr. O'Brien collects the Best Short Stories of 1928 for America, having already done that service for Great Britain.

Those who delight in the peculiarly deft and satisfying craft of the short story will not overlook these anthologies. They may miss some names ; but Mr. O'Brien includes nothing that is without quality. This volume has the greater interest because most of the episodes in scene and psychology-arc completely Arnerican. Frederick Brennan's " Guardeen Angel 7, is lifted into ironic perfection by the unexpectedly scathing remark of the mother at the end. In A Country Passion Morley Callaghan wrings the heart with a grim state- ment of the grim misapprehension of inarticulate souls. John of God, by Marie Cristine Chamber, is a moving and beautifu little history, mounted by the -ancient Spanish grace lingering in Mexico. The Jew, by-E. Seaver, is a savage and effective piece of irony. The fierce impact of Fannie Hirst's saxophone may unnerve you. But you will-be consoled by the delicate notation of Ruth Suckow, the imaginative sympathy of Dorothy Canfield, the spiritual excitement Of Elizabeth Madox Roberts.

Deep-Sea Bubbles is an odd book. It is packed with magni- ficent material concerning sailing ships and sailor men, and the monstrous ,dwellers in ..the -deep- sea. But the style of Mr. Hedger, third mate -on the " Anna 'Lombard," supposed to deicribe her trip to-the Pacific as a whaler; char-. tered by scientists interested in the qualities of sperm oil, is so Early Victorian and genteel that we sigh now and then for one blast of Aloysius' Horn. Yet, as we become more and more absorbed by the crew of that remarkable ship, the well- behaved manner of Mr. Hedger, watering down apologetic- ally the strangeness of the voyage, becomes almost lovable. The first mate was the son of a German Duke, and had been a French general, the steward was an exiled Chinese prince, the captain was as nearly an angel as a captain might be. The saihnaker saw the " Flying Dutchman " twice, and i Maltese hand had theoriesabout the " Odyssey." The con- versation rolls richly round the romantic fates of other -ships, the shanties ring out mocking, you are made acquainted with all the punctilio and superstition of the seaman's life. " Away, whalers!" comes the cry, and you assist at the vasty death- struggles of Leviathan. The wonderful voyage fizzles out in some obscure quarrel of the scientists, which is like reality, so we are left rather thwarted and wondering. But this is a most fascinating book, which can but leave any reader more con- vinced than ever that much of the world's splendour slipped away with the proud, beauty of set sails.

In The Cluny Problem Mr. Fielding not only presents a most exciting detective story, but a really good novel as well. The people are all so vivacious, various, and picturesque that they really matter to the plot, instead of sticking about like lay figures waiting for thedetectives to question them.. Sir Anthony Cross and Mr. Browalow are discovered dead in the Cedar Room of the Villa Porte-Bonheur with pistols beside them. What had the vampish Mrs. Brownlow, the dark-eyed Mrs. Easterby, what had Smith, Lascelles, Tibbits, Mr. Murgatroyd, what had even Vivian Young, Sir Anthony's fiancee, to do with it ? What, later, had Reginald Maitland ? The French police have a succession of surprises. Inspector Poynter of Scotland Yard, merely " observes." One, Mackay, repre- senting himself as a private agent from Aberdeen, makes gloomy remarks in an outrageous dialect which I unwarily ascribed to the usual ignorance of Saxon novelists. I was wrong. Inspector Poynter had " observed " that also. Hence the reader's wild astonishment in the last chapter, after the French detectives have supplied a complete explanation of the murders. The Cluny Problem is brilliantly successful. It stimulates through its progress and satisfies in its conclusion.

RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.