Fiction

By WILLIAM PLOMER

Salvation. By Sholem Asch. Translated by Willa and Edwin Earmarked for Hell. ByRamonJ,_Sender., Triaslated by James A Handful of Dust. By -Evelyn Waugh: (Chapman and Hall.

78. 6d.) The End of a Childhood. By Henry Handel Richardson. (Heine-

mann. 7s. 6d.) - - f.

IN the Jewish . quarter of Warsaw. some :years ago, I

remember being much inipressed by the strong in- dividuality of the people aroluid ine. The rabbis, pale, bearded, and , and ...the married women in their ill-fitting wigs. seemed to .me more purely Jewish than others of their' race encountered- in other parts of the world ; they, seemed mysterious, pfoird, and a little

terrifying, and at the Same. time I was keenly aware of • my own ignorance about them. Salvation has done much to

suggest to me the precise nature of their racial . and cultural inheritance. A story of Polish Jewish life a century ago, it has none of the tiresome artificiality_ sometimes found in historical novels, but is fluently and vividly told, and has

been lucidly translated by Mi. and Mrs. Muir::: - • --

Amongst these " bygone Jewish communities shut off

from the rest of the world religion was a pasSion.-, Toprayeri and ritualism and theological studies many of them deVoted their entire existence; and Sholem Asch has succeeded making that existence real and'interesting—to the uninformed, i present-day reader. It was an-lessentially Oriental existence, and the prayers rose easily to a Buddhistic rapture : " I love Thee and would like to vanish in Thee as a zephyr is lost,in the wind, -eh a blade of grass is lost in the pastures, as a drop

is lost in the sea." _ _ _ .

. . .

The story itself is chiefly that of the career of a saint, in whom the force of pity "mounted to a burning passion." The boy Jechiel, of a poetical and mystical turn of mind from the beginning, had to endure a hard 'childhood. His father was entirely obsessed With his religion, and upon the mother fell the whole burden of maintaining the family, which she did by selling things to the Gentiles, who seemed " necessary so that the Jews might endure in their midst all the sorrows of exile that God had imposed on them." The most remarkable Gentile in the book is a feudal nobleman, Pan Wydawski, to whom the peasants and Jews were bound in lifelong slavery. " I whip my Jews myself," he said, " when I have the inclination. But I won't allow anybody _else to touch a hair of their heads." However, " his whole environment had crumbled," and in a very showy way he put an end to himself. The climax of the book is centred upon the intended con- version and marriage of a Jewish girl to a Gentile, and the supreme irony of a rabbi and a Catholic priest both praying at the same time and in identical terms for opposite ends helps to make this novel something more than a story or a historical reconstruction, and provides it with a powerful moral.

Pacifists, and no doubt militarists as well, will not be slow to find a moral in Earmarked for Hell, a faithful picture of war in all its blundering horror, and of a war, be it noted, more recent than that Of 1914-1918. In 1921 Abd el Krim revolted against the Spaniards in Morocco and inflicted a terrible defeat on the army of General Silvestre, who committed suicide. The adyentures of one Viance, a private in that array, are the theme of this book. In a prefatory note, Sefior Ramon Sender is unduly modest about his accomplishment. He says his work " might be signed by any one of the two hundred thousand soldiers " who took part in the campaign, and excuses his " irregular jottings ". for, occasional prolixity, or lack of literary quality. tilt only a man of rare imaginative power and literary skill, a man' bOth honest and brilliant, could have prOduced this record of a prolonged and compli- cated nightmare. Senor Sender makes it clear that he had no need to invent anything, and his pages bear the stamp of truth. The book will not please those who like war stories to be wrapped up in cant or sentimentality, and it has no "bright side " except the jewel-like clearness and durability of the grim poetry which its author has managed to extract from suffering and madness. Private Viance has as great a significance as any character in recent fiction, which contains no grander hero. The processes of modern life return ,him to his native place a moral and physical wreck, 'With no Work, ,.no family, and no . .v disappeared. hope:—een his native place has disappeared. There survives, hOwever, a woman who sings : " A woman's heart

And the trumpets of Fame

When the.soldiers go by. Cry, Viva f For Spain ! '

; She repeated the Viva ! For Spain ! ' three times, in weird, gimy

harmonies, waggling her hips. . . ." , •

But perhaps the most terrible moment in the book is the one when a priest makes, no attempt to deny that " it's a greater sin to fail- in one's duty to the King than in one's duty to

God." Itis a _pity that one of the most impressive of all war books should have been given, in its English version, such a clumsy title. The translation is the reverse of clumsy.

Mr: Evelyn Waugh Seems to be moved chiefly by a kind of -fascinated disgust, and the irritation which_ this useful emotion

sets up in him has caused him to produce another of his culti- ,

vated pearls. He takes the title of his' new book from The ',Waste Land—" I will show you fear in a handful Of dust."

;The fear chiefly exhibited by his characters seems to be the -fear of living anything like ,what used -to be called a God- fearing life. The story, which dealila'rgelY with what might once have been called -' the sins of society," is neatly contrived and adroitly written, with a neatness that is perhaps French rather than English, and it catches exactly certain of the

rhythms of.conteniporary life. There is no waste, no whimsy. and no padding ; the hoOk holds the attention-throughout and is of exactly the right length. I think it would be a mis-

take to regard Mr. Waugh's more surprising situations as farcical or far-fetched ; they are on the whole extremely realistic, and charged with the irony that belongs to the commonplace but is not always perceived. His large and well-earned public will lose no time in discovering the plot for themselves : it is enough to say here that it concerns the victimization of a " commonplace. romantic English squire." who suddenly discovers that he is living in a world bereft of order.

" It was as though the whole reasonable and decent constitution of things, the sum of all he had experienced or learned to expect, were an inconspicuous, inconsiderable object mislaid somewhere on the dressing table ; no outrageous circumstance in which he found himself, no new, mad thing brought to his notice, could add a jot to the all encompassing chaos that shrieked about his ears.- Mr. Waugh has such. an economical method of showing up the fool in his folly that he does not allow himself scope for

elaborate characterization, and his virtuous hero remains a little vague, but his method might well be studied by some of his untidier contemporaries.

The End of a Childhood is partly composed of a continuation of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, or rather of the fortunes, of Richard Mahony's child ; partly of eight " sketches of girlhood " ; and partly of some " tales of Old -Strasbourg.** Henry Handel Richardson is one of the most important writers yet associated with the Dominions, and amateurs and

anthologists of the short story should not miss this :volume. A child bathing with two fat women ; three young girls quarrelling while they try to sleep in one bed too small for them ; flirtatiousness beginning to show itself, and curiosity struggling with modesty ; four girls " ragging " in a bath- room ; an agony of adolescent bashfulness ; an unsuccessful

appearance at a first dance—such are the themes of the " sketches of -girlhood." To call them sketches is to suggest that they are slight ; in fact they are so exuberant and full of life that they deserye abetter name. Two of the other stories are somewhat old-fashioned and disappointing, but two are noteworthy, one dealing with the surroundings in which a baby. passes its brief, life, and one with a woman's thoughts on her deathbed. TO judge from this book alone, one might suppose that Henry Handel Richardson knows

much more about women and children than she does about men ; but in any case one could scarcely fail to recognize her unusual powers.