New Novels
The Farmer's Hotel. By John O'Hara. (Cresset Press. 8s. 6d.) THAT Mr. O'Hara should have written the uneasy trifle that goes by the title of The Farmer's Hotel is the most surprising thing about the book. Composed in a kind of Basic Pennsylvanian and paying obsessional attention to the minutiie of the setting—a trick that seems to be increasingly proffered these days as demonstrating a universalised simplicity, it fumbles apathetically at the collection-of_ odd-people-brought-together-by-Fate theme, The Bridge of .Fcm Luis Rey out of the latter-day Steinbeck. Sure, some of the old mastery of dialogue is still there, the slurred half-tones of the speaking voice accurately scored ; and—for Art's sake—there's an unhappy ending which nags itself into inevitability a third of the way through. But take down Butterfield 8 if you want to read an O'Hara : the differ- ence between the two books is the difference between a roomful of people and a waxwork exhibition.
Mr. Bergengruen comes from another continent, another century. The Last Captain of Horse is an essay in values. Discursive—only occasionally over-talkative—civilised, warm, calmly sentimental, Mr. Bergengruen introduces his old friend the Rittmeister to us casually, sure of our affection. When we've pulled ifp our chairs, he lets him talk on and on about the things which happened in that other time. For -me the first ninety-five pages of urbane introduction, handled with a grace and graciousness that's in the highest European tradition of Mann and Gide, are the real heart of the book. The Rittmeister's own stories which form its body are inclined to make their points so obliquely as to become, on occasion, almost private jokes ; and here and there in the narrative there's a weariness of spirit which takes the colour out of the words and the gentleness out of the old voice‘ No, it's when Mr. Bergengruen's actually talking to him that I'm happiest. And who is he ?
" The classic Rittmeister is the last representative of the old centuries-spanning times. He is the last of the long line. He knows that his days are numbered not only by God, but also by men. He is aware that he is an anachronism. This knowledge enables him to regard himself with a grain of secret irony, but induces also some- thing of the resignation of the very old, whom nothing disturbing or threatening can any more touch, since they know : before the threat materialises we shall already have been taken."
That's him ; and there's a touch of Tartarin of Tarascon there, a common ancestry with Don Quixote, a mingling of buffoonery and beauty, of nullity and nobility.
Mr. Bergengruen's book is a remarkable one. To write about the values of European civilisation becomes increasingly difficult ; the words get long and clumsy ; the sculpture in the museum is covered with dust. But here over the fondue in an Italian inn, the last Rittmeister is talking about it all, easily, wisely, ramblingly, touchingly, well. Listen to him in his anecdotage, it'll soon be too late.
At first sight The Year of the Lion suffers somewhat by comparison with Mr. Hanley's first novel, The Consul at Sunset. Certainly the more recent book gives the impression of greater confidence ; but this has led to occasional slickness of writing and—sometimes—an Ethel M. Dellish superficiality of characterisation. We know too well the eager boy of twenty whose fresh first impressions of Africa give way to a deeper understanding of himself and the country, a sort of Kraft durch Angst process. The Angst is furnished in this case by Major Fawn-Cochley, a tough old madman for whom the boy Jervis has to work, Mrs. Brinden, a voluptuous slut with a drunken husband, and a lion, pursued in company with the selfsame husband. But the triteness dangerously inherent in all this is for the mast part, kept in check by Mr. Hanley who manages to achieve a real—and not a novelettish—development of character ; sand the lion-hunt- especially its climax—is very exciting. Altogether, after a good begin- ning followed by an uneasy fifty or sixty pages, The Year of the Lion comes out pretty well ; The Consul at Sunset was no freak.
It is perhaps Mr. Hanley's knowledge of and feeling for Africa that blow life into the story's clay. He knows and loves the country with a rare compassion and simplicity ; he is able to communicate its size and the size of its problems without writing a tract or a travelogue. His people and his beasts, white and black, drunk and sober, lion and- tick, are moved deftly over the carefully blocked-in landscape. Yes, without achieving the sustained tension of the earlier book The Year of the Lion fulfils the promise that Mr. Hanley showed then ; and for the last hundred pages or so it is more solidly realised than anything he has previously done. Lastly, Side-Show, a first novel by a Mr. Gerard Bell. Without in any way being a great book this contains some of the least pretentious war writing that I've seen for some time. By anyone who served in Burma it will be accepted, I think, as one of the first realistic (and, thank Heavens, not always stiff-upper-lipped) accounts of that particular kind of ghastliness. Amateurish and convention-ridden as the book is, Mr. Bell has nevertheless succeeded in communica- ting an experience with a minimum of mucking about; and he should be congratulated.
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