The Eloquence of the Islander
The Last Landfall. By Denis Malone. (Geoffrey Bles. 108. 6d.) The Silver Fleece. By Robert Collis. (Nelson. 158.) EACH of these books is an autobiography of unusual interest. They have certain qualities in common, although they describe extremely different careers. Their authors are both Irishmen, they have both had unusual careers, they are both sophisticated. sensitive and witty, they have a common affection for both philosophical speculation and athletics, they both write unusually well. Mr. Malone has perhaps had the wider experience of the two, though there is little in it, but Mr. Collis gives the impression of posiessing on the whole the more interesting, because in the circumstances thei more unusual, temperament. Unquestionably they have both written books which many readers will greatly enjoy.
Mr. Malone was the son. of a policeman. His father was a truculent man whose recreation it was, when off duty, to march officiously and alone with a blackthorn stick down a certain street whose reputation was such that policemen were always sent there in couples. Yet he spent all his spare money in indulging a taste for reading which his son has clearly inherited. Mr. Malone was sent first of all to an elementary school, which he seems to have enjoyed and about Which he is most amusing, then, at considerable economic sacrifice to his parents, to a Catholic boarding school, which he enjoyed less, and thirdly, when his father had decided that his son should become a priest, to a training college in the North of England conducted by Jesuits, where his ambitions centred Almost exclusively on football. Within a very short time Mr. Malone decided that he had no vocation for the priesthood, and after brief periods in estate agents and shipowners offices he took to the sea as a wireless officer. He_svent round the world on a tramp steamer, and then, just afttc:starting on a second:voetge,7bsut-the7ntiofortune captured by a German submarine which had sunk his ship. The third stetion of his book.. leecribes his imprisonae* in ifiglannousfliarlenbnrg prison, and his narrative ends ,with a description of the sentence of complete and permanent deafness to which a Harley Street specialist condemned ;him in 1924 as the result of his- war experiences. The whole story is delightffillY and -;‘-i■-idfir.ttold, with innumerable skilfully drawn portraits of men and pictures of scenes. The best thing in it is the deseription of a football match (which ended in a free fight) between the ship's company and a team of Egyptians in Alexandria, but it is from begiiiiiing to end an entirely delightful book. • So is The Silver Fleece. Mr. Collis. was brought up ;just outside Dublin, and while still a schoolboy managed to involve himself in the 1916 rebellion. He was sent to Rugby, and takes his time there as a text for an extremely lucid discussion of the Public School system. At Cambridge lie was secretary of the Rugby Football Club and a sensational convert to the doctrines of Dr. Buchman, who had noti yet honoured Oxford with a reflection of his evangelical glory. After Cambridge he went -for a year to Yale and then to King's College Hospital, about each of which he has both sensible discussion and amusing anecdotes to offer. :••He gained his international cap for Rugby football, and prints a short but exhilarating description of the great England v. Ireland match of 1925, in which he played a conspicuous part. He is now one :of the most notable luminaries in Dublin's medical constellation. Its publishers call The Silver Fleece " one of the finest autobiographies of our day." They exaggerate excusably and only slightly. It is certainly one of the most entertaining books recently published.. DEREK VERSCHOYLi:.
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