Fiction
The World so Wide
Gallions Reach. By H. M. Tomlinson. (Heinemann. 7s. 6c1.) WE are all by this time well and gladly aware that Mr. Tomlinson deserves to be called an Elizabethan, partly because he ventures into places lovely, strange, and terrible with unstaled eyes, undulled ears, and an unbroken imagination, and partly because his impassioned report of these wrings new wine from the overtrodden grapes of language to communicate the excitement of his original impression. But, unlike an Elizabethan, he is too chivalrous and gentle, for all his courage, to ravish from those mar- vellous shores anything but intangible plunder of pity, terror, mirth, fine friendship, and such faery spoil of clear-coloured images as makes it seem still something of a privilege to linger on such an inexhaustible Earth. And what gives the greater validity to this brightly minted speech of his is the fact that he is no bigot in his sense of beauty and no runaway from the mingled wrong and sweetness of his native land. He knows how the hard radiant morning breaks cruelly over a desolate pithead as well as how ineffable colours may solidify into an island in seas of spice ; and London River can still amaze one who has passed through jungle-alleys on the Amazon. Also he is not kin to those lusty literary pretenders to a mimic adventure and a theatrical Open Road who scoff at things of art as if they were not even more deeply rooted in nature than the transient daffodils. All fair shapes are safe with a lover of the Pleiades. So, in this brave and beautiful book, where the indifferent waves, " their glassy inclines fretted with lesser waves and hurrying cornices," wash down the struggling ship and quiet captain, the pale ethereal jade bowl in the Chinese house at Penang can be a refinement of spiritual experience for the young man who has hardly survived those dominant surges crested with death ; and the glaze on a precious porcelain betrays the temper of humanity as well as the sea-patina on a sailor's oath. But it is this temper of humanity that is the author's chief concern, whether it stand isolate among seas and jungles, or be poured in crowds through London and Rangoon.
The quality of Mr. Tomlinson's imaginative substance, the fierce and tender patterns of his romantic realism, the sleights and surprises of his style of exquisite exactitude, have become familiar from books like Gifts of Fortune and Sea and Jungle. It was certain that, when he chose to write a novel, none of these gifts would be lost. We were assured of experiences intimate, agonizing, overwhelming, oddly clarifying in the end, like the impressions that come through' a long 'con- valescence: We waited for the outlines of far-bound ships, and fragrances from sinister and enchanting lands where civiliza- tions have perished to feed the jungle and complicate the orchid ; and confidently expected the communication of pri- maeval fear, and enduring courage, a profound compassion, and a bright anger against all oppressors. But minds careless of easy comparisons heeded no phrase about an " English Conrad." Both writers are versed in the incalculable ways of the sea and the high hard ways of chivalry ; and there the likeness ends. Not here the sombre atmosphere, heavy with fatalism, - brooding mightily over some predestined and aris- tocratic souls ! For all the disaster and failure in this chronicle, it is steeped in a great luminosity, in the light of morning before the daisies are awake, or the light of eventide and peace that is the sole and sufficient reward of endurance to the end.
I daresay that those that analyse the construction of novels may decide that Gallions Reach has faults in its development. Doubtless, for instance, considering its scale, the story is too leisurely in its beginning, though it would be hard to part with Jimmy's walk to the British Museum, and his illumina- tions among its doves and gods. Indeed, it has but a picaresque plot, I suppose, for Jimmy, having -casually knocked in the gross red face of Injustice, as personified in Mr. Perriam, merely follows the felicitous gestures of Chance. (Or is it Chance ? The delicate image of Kuan-Yin decides his way.) This is a lyrical novel, the Odyssey of a spirit realiiing its own qualities by fine responses to perils and seductions on sea and land. Probably there is material here for at least two books— a noble fault in these days of thin and crackling tales of neg- ligible people who let " I dare not " wait upon " I would." The concentrated story of Jim's reception into the. courtesy and comity of the ' Altair; the voyage of that doomed ship, and her heart-moving end in the wild Indian seas, with the sequel of the anguished survivors in the boats, seems almost enough for the consciousness. But a new adventure begins
in Rangoon and Penang ; and after the .suffering and exalta- tion of the sea comes the more fantastic' suffering and exalta- tion of the jungle. Personally, I would not miss a single episode. The only thing which does not convince me is Jim's final wish to lay the ghost of Perriam. The Perriams of this world cannot possibly have a ghost : they are altogether subdued to mortality.
Gallions Reach may be an imperfect novel ; but it is a gallant and lovely book, thronged with figures that are all printed on your eyes, and that nearly all make some attack on your heart. The style is as pure and rich as a great aqua- marine and as penetrating as a dagger. To read it is to fuid one's worldly experience irradiated, one's sympathies quickened and widened, and one's philosophy stirred by the symbolic image of an insubstantial ship that after unimaginable fortitudes makes a landfall off Hesperidean Isles.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
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