This Month’S New Reading

Ien New South Wales

Vs Very Young

[OGRAPHY of the richest kind, as full of plums as the best of English Christmas puddings, tes between the covers of M. H. s’s John Macarthur, the story of \ man who was, among other igs, the “founder of Australian imercial enterprise and of Aus ian political agitation.” ne hundred and fifty years ago [year, John Macarthur convinced Privy Council in London that destiny of New South Wales was nd up with wool, and in the I year he brought the first pure inos to Australia. jio years earlier he had written: ne of the most eminent manu- Erers of woollen cloth in Eng fsaw by accident some speci is of wool I had raised in New th Wales. . . so fine that it in ;d them to find me out and b particular inquiries how and fhat manner it was raised.” id from 1803 this astonishing [persisted in growing his sheep [‘Spanish wool” while others [ theirs for mutton, it the story starts long before [ because “at some distant period istory there lived in Argyllshire the side of Loch Awe a clan m as Clann Artair, whose mem ; modestly claimed to derive I Smeivic Mhor, a son of King lur of the Round Table. . .” i this as background, John arthur was born in 1767. [1790, with a delicate wife and g baby son, he sailed from and for Port Jackson with the nd Fleet, in what was to be an t months’ voyage of almost un

dated horror.

f. Ellis gives a living picture of first two decades of Sydney’s while launching the main part he book, which is in effect a ipioning of Macarthur against letractors. it it all comes, including, of se, the Rum Rebellion and the sing of Governor ( ex-Bounty ) i in 1808. te arrest of Macarthur on i’s order sparked off the re in, and Mr. Ellis emphasises Macarthur “is held up by a section of historians as the ed antithesis of the virtuous i. . . as having caused the with al of every Governor between ip and Macquarie.” This at le, declares the biographer, is mstrably untrue, e (Macarthur) is accounted the rum trader of the early days ew South Wales, but there is evidence of his commerce in r than of that of any prominent Jn of his time. . . • no doubt earned him little

credit with his fellows that in a loose age his was the first stable home in Australia; that the roof of Elizabeth Farm sheltered a wife legally wedded and a family living the life of an ordinary English domestic menage in the midst of a community in which nearly the whole of the rest of the ruling class, civil and military, lived squalidly with concubines.”

At all events, when Macarthur died in 1834 at the age of 67, no tribute was paid to him in the Colony whose prosperity he had virtually founded.

But if he has waited long for a defender, he has it now in a biographer who has assembled the facts, both prosaic and stormy, and has woven them into a gorgeous tapestry. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 50/-.)

The Gentle Art Of

Looking Back

PRECISELY how much of Ruth Park’s Pink Flannel is auto biographical is not made clear in the book, but, one way and another, it is obvious that if Jenny Hood was the early edition of Ruth Park she must have been a handful for four young and charming maiden aunts to adopt.

In the opening stages of the story, Jenny shows an alarming tendency to be very whimsical indeed, but by the time Aunt Louisa reprehensibly falls in love with the Pig Man (an enterprising young farmer), things have settled down to an entertain ing and wistfully reminiscent level.

The setting is a New Zealand country town called “Te Kano” (obviously Te Kuiti), in the King- Country. The time is the 1920’5, when skirts were above the knees, waists were round the hips and bosoms were practically non-existent.

Miss Park makes no pretence of writing a really great novel of New Zealand life (nobody has yet achieved that feat), but she presents a diverting picture of the conven tions, antics and snobberies of a little colonial community living on what was once a Maori frontier.

Perhaps the strongest feature of the book is its remarkably fair and true handling of Maori characters.

The author takes a strong tilt at the too-common New Zealand de lusion that there is no fundamental race-discrimination in the Dominion, and once or twice, with every justi fication, she lets herself go on the stupid and perhaps unintentional cruelty that rises from ignorant prejudice.

The most moving episode in the book occurs when pretty, poised Aunt Ailie, aged only 17, and a 20-

years-old educated Maori, Do»ald Hana, decide on marriage.

Aunt Barbara, the eldest of the four sisters, appeals to the boy’s cultured father, who says: “I am as concerned as you are about this un

fortunate happening. . . You know

as well as I do the consequence of a marriage between Maori and pakeha. . . Your sister would be out cast by her own people, and not accepted by mine without hurtful comment. My son, for whom I have planned so much, would be ruined.”

Ruined? The word gives Aunt Barbara something to think about as she sits, shy and distressed, be fore the stately figure of the man whose son comes under the ban of “colour” or “caste” or something.

Ailie and Donald elope, get married and fade tantalisingly out of the story. The author gives no inkling about the outcome of the “mixed” marriage. It could have been a triumph (that does happen sometimes) or a disaster.

The title of the book comes from a pink flannel petticoat inflicted on the small Jenny at the start, which she outgrows at the end.

Admirable illustrations are con tributed by Phil Taylor. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 16/-.)

D Arcy Niland’S First

Published Novel

IN the same month as Ruth Park’s Pink Flannel, her husband’s first published novel, The Shiralee, appears, thereby illustrating what has been termed “an astonishing example of married genius.”

The shiralee (defined as a swag man’s bundle) in this case is Buster, the four-years-old daughter of the central character, the itinerant Macauley.

A consummate stylist, Mr. Niland has produced the best story about Australians that has come to light for many years. His character drawing is superb, and his crafts manship takes some of his prose close to the borderline of poetry.

What is more, in an age of slovenly writing, D’Arcy Niland provides an object lesson in the choice and correct use of words.

Of Macauley and Buster it is said: “They’ll tell you that he took that child from the city when it was only three and a half, and went into the backblocks, and carried it on his shoulder, under his arm in a sugar bag.” The story of the two is told with subtle conciseness against a background of small towns and their inhabitants—storekeepers, stock and station agents, publicans, butchers and so on—stations, shearing-sheds, work-camps, gaols and endless, dusty roads.

Such a theme and such a back ground might slither with fatal ease into sentimentality and bathos, but

at no point does the author’s grip relax.

The Shiralee is an example of what happens when a brilliant writer deals with subjects he under stands intensively. • Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 16/-.)

Inside View Of The

Palace

TWENTY years ago, in the reign of King George V, Queen Mary often went on what might be called rummaging tours of London shops. At once stately, gracious and reserved, the Queen was revered as a symbol of all that was best in the vanished Victorian age, yet she moved among the people of Britain •with an astonishing lack of pomp and-circumstance.

To-day Queen Elizabeth II can do nothing of the kind. Nor can the Queen Mother or Princess Margaret. The artificial barriers between the Royal Family and the people have all but disappeared, which is a good thing; but at the same time a feverish public interest in every act, every expression and every gesture of Royalty has become an overwhelming obsession which, at times, must be rather a terrible thing for Royalty.

This is one of the incidental im plications made by Phyl Hopkins in Village Royal, a charmingly written survey of her 30 years in the Buckingham Palace “com munity.”

Mrs. Hopkins starts her record in 1920, when she was a pig -tailed schoolgirl. She became the wife of Major George Hopkins, CBE, MVO, MC, who, for 24 years, was Super intendent of the Royal Mews. Major Hopkins retired recently, after achieving his greatest professional triumph by his stern attention to the countless details essential to the unrivalled pageantry of'the Corona tion on June 2, 1953.

Mrs. Hopkins uses no fairy-tale devices. Her sense of humour pre vents her from falling into the traps that beset most writers concerned with living Royalty. She is no fulsome flatterer, and she does not write about Royal children with coy fatuity.

The climax of her record comes towards the end, when she tells how, for a solid hour, while virtually the whole world was looking to London on Coronation morning, the fabul ous procession moved literally with in inches of disaster.

Twenty minutes before the Gold Coach was due at the Palace to re ceive the Queen and her husband, it was discovered that two large harness buckles had come back from the cleaners fastened to the leather back to front. And through those buckles passed the trace which linked all the eight horses.

Only a handful of men knew of

the crisis, and to them the Abbey seemed a thousand miles away. At any moment the worst could have happened. Even if the horses had started prancing when the continu ous roar of cheering rose to deafen ing peaks of sound, it might have caused the gorgeous Gold Coach to come to a standstill.

But the buckles held. Everything was put right during the Corona tion ceremony, and if Major Hopkins’s sigh of relief wasn’t broadcast and televised it should have been. (Published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Australian price, 17/6.)

The Fisherman’S

Story

POET, novelist, dramatist and lawyer, Dr. Kurt Frieberger has achieved the feat of telling the story of Simon Peter, the fisherman who became a key figure in the drama of the early years of the Christian faith, as a narrative in the form of a novel.

The book was first published at Vienna last year with the distinc tion of being the first novel ever dedicated by permission to a Pope.

There is little basis for a com parison with romances which have touched on the same subject in one form or another, notably Quo Vadis? (the Sienkiewicz novel, not the Hollywood travesty). Where other tales have been built largely on a glittering reconstruction —of varying degrees of accuracy—of the spectacle of pagan Rome under the first impact of Christian beliefs and teachings, Simon Peter the Fisher man holds rigidly to a lofty ideal of presentation.

For all that, the book has ample colour and movement to attract the interest of more than the scholarly and the strictly devout. (Published by William Heinemann, London. Australian price, 18/9.)

Micronesian Insects*

TO quote from the fore wok Alexander Spoehr, Direct'd Bishop Museum, Honolulu; : publication of Insects of Micro is the culmination of one oc most ambitious projects yet ui taken in the zoology of the P= area. The project involves the; of many specialists, and the. operation of numerous institu and agencies, both private andE ernmental.”

We have received the first; volumes of this work. Cleau will run to a good many volumn the time it is completed. The which includes the American Territory, Guam, the Bon Volcano, Marcus. Wake, N!

Ocean, and the Gilbert Islands] been covered by many differen vestigators, whose reports wi published as received.

Volume I is an introductioc J. Linsley Gressitt which in is a 257-page up-to-date refes book on the area. It contains : detailed maps, photographs, as discussion of the geology, climate, flora, and fauna.

There is a useful gazetee islands and places, giving alternative names and spellings the spellings which are now standardised in new maps o;c area, with exact geographical tions of every place listed, ini tude and longitude. There is a good general bibliography of; lished works on these islands..

Volume 2 is simply a bibliogn of technical data dealing witH area, and is not of general inti Subsequent volumes will pre ably be of scientific interest in. main, but Volume I is a refee work for every Pacific bookslh No price is shown. The BS Museum, Honolulu, is the publi t The Norwegian expedition v is to make scientific studie Easter Island sailed from Osk September 15. The leader, (Kon-Tiki) Heyerdahl, was too the expedition at Panama making arrangements in ChileJ t A Hawaiian “village,” corrr with “Polynesian flavour” and swimming pools, was opener Waikiki Beach in late Sept© with accommodation for 180 gj One of the swimming pools ca; covered with transparent floo for dancing, t Tenders for the Suva and Lari wharf schemes will be called : March, and the combined prc should be completed in four from the placing of the conr said a Fiji Government states on September 20.