But, withal, I believe the book to be weaker than Carl Van Vechten would admit. I believe it to be weak in the same manner, and for the same reasons, I am inclined to decry the theses of many modern writers. In a way, “The Hill of Dream” is a study in the Psychology of Insanity. In a way, books like “Ulysses” and “Babbitt” are studies in Sociology and Psychology and whatnot. And, frankly, I do not like my science with my literature.
All this sort of intellectualism strives honestly for the truth; “The Hill of Dreams” attains a unique and unrivalled beauty, but any plot which selects one human specimen, and insists upon our microscopic interest in him, following the author’s experiments to the bitterest of ends, asks of us a little too much. These things are like too-lengthy poems, which cannot sustain our emotions through all their tomes, howsoever clever and beautiful they may be. Our complex minds require more complexity in our literature, more variation, less study and more story, than they give us. Personally, again, I prefer “Vanity Fair” to the most beautiful “-ology” ever to be written.
But that is far afield from “The Hill of Dreams”, and I should be truly sinful to lose a reader for it by rhapsodizing. It is beautiful prose, it is—after its own fashion—an interesting story, and it is certainly true to a peculiar little minority of human life. In these days when dramatic value must be subjective to be great, it is a great book.
D. G. C.
A Hind in Richmond Park. By W. H. Hudson. (E. P. Dutton.)
Reading “A Hind in Richmond Park” is like going on a long walk over rolling fields and hillsides in the face of a stiff breeze. There is a tang and freshness in the book which is exhilarating. You feel as if you were with Mr. Hudson in his wanderings. As you open the book he smiles at you and takes your hand and you are his. He takes you walking in England or riding across the Argentine pampas and talks to you about the sights and sounds en route, rambling smoothly from one thought to another.
He calls himself a field naturalist, but he is much more than that word implies even in its best sense. He is a poet of nature; a sort of modern Chaucer in his whole-hearted delight in and appreciation of the minute details in nature. The reader will find scattered through the pages many of his own inarticulate musings set down with charming simplicity and depth of feelings. Mr. Hudson talks to you about smells, winds and sounds and you find that you are listening to an expression of many of your own thoughts.
The material of the book is a strange admixture of anecdotes, science, and common sense which every now and then reaches an almost poetical plain of thought. It is neither a collection of essays, nor a journal, nor a narrative; it is really a set of printed conversations—a member of that delightful species that may be picked up for a half-hour’s reading, and laid aside again without the charm being broken. Nor is this because the subjects fail to arouse interest. Anyone who has caught nature off her guard, who has walked abroad after a thunder shower in dry weather, or who has tramped past newly-ploughed fields, or lain among the cowslips on a crystal-bright May morning with the fresh south wind in his face, will find a source of quiet pleasure in “A Hind of Richmond Park”. He will forget that there is ice and snow outside and too much tobacco smoke within, and will shut his eyes and dream of pleasant summer days of long ago.
M. T.