12 APRIL 1930, Page 37

Tottel's Travels

Pink Furniture. By A. E. Coppard. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) ONE would doubt very much whether any more surprising book than Pink Furniture is likely to appear -this publishing

season. What a monstrous, magical and uncompromising production it is ! The author seems to have set out deliber- ately to out-Coppard Coppard, increasing to its utmost limit

that leaven of fantasy which is found in his short stories—

which, indeed, is the mark of his master-touch as a short story writer, setting him clear above all schools of psuedo-realisin and the rest : and the result is something decidedly different

. from anything hitherto seen- in the - way Of " juvenile 7 literature. Try it on the baby and see what happens : he may

crow with pleasure or scream with rage—we have no idea.

But just as there are passages that must be the delight of all . small children and wise men, so there are those which must infuriate the too-professional writer. For this magic-maker dares to be facetious—always an abomination to your hum- ourless critic of uninspired books—he dares to be unmistakably satirical at the expense of all solemn literary gentlemen —he dares to be preposterously nonsensical—in fact, he does absolutely as he likes, caring not a fig for anybody but his hero, young Mr. Toby Tottel. And what a world he creates for . this seeker of Pink Furniture to wander in Toby lived " on a nice verdant common where it was bright as a looking-glass all day long and as warm as a new loaf," but he soon got tired of this and determined to go out into the

:world and look for something, -better. - Of course, there was really nothing better—at least, Toby comes back tight enough

at the end of it all, discovers that quite ordinary furniture can be made pink if you want it so, and, as he should, marries the girl next door. But we'are not convinced that this ending is an entirely honest affair : it is altogether too subtly simple.

It is the artist's ending and not the moralist's, and what it neatly does is to make us "turn back to wander again in the bright phantasmagoric world -of the adventures : which is as it should be, for Pink Furniture will stand as many readings as you like.

But how is it possible to convey an idea of the book's de- licious variety ? The Twice Woman, who, of course, said everything twice : Fellafungabelus, the .jolly forester with a golden-bead the market of hedgehogs, the 6Ook-selling owl, the terrible Flying Klacken : Snooping Barnacle (what names!), the prime minSter of Purganda : giants, princesses, sailors, cooks and poets, racing caterpillars (ridden by grass-hopper jockeys), artful old card-playing toads, glow-worms who carry parsley parasols to ward off the glare of the moon : and Toby Tottel adventuring along amidst the lot of them—and a hundred more ; it is a brilliant medley, marvellously insane, loaded with colour, and maddeningly inconsequent. Yet, through it all, how lightly the narrative runs on 1

Here is a glimpse of the Patent Games :

" What a lovely sight when they (the snails) took off their helmetEi and revealed themselves in all their shining simplicity I -Without a word they took up the .rape in their hands, while the bees took up their end of the rope and mumbled among them. selves. The owl held up .his spyglass for silence. Then shouted Pull 1 acce—the" rope "striitehed- taut, and the six bees began to buzz such a bombilation as was never known. Everybody's eardrums throbbed, tingled, rumbled, and split. Whoever heard them in the next county mistook it for thunder. At the same time the bees snatched and hove and rocked and growled at the 'snails, thinking to frighten them and pull them over. the mark in half a minute. But oh no 1 The six snails preserved an august ,calm, and with the rope held firmly in their little hands, just sat down and took no notice of the roaring, raging bees. They twitched their horns slightly, looked calmly up into the bright blue sky, and twirled their moustaches."

The children who get Pink Furniture as a present will be _luckier than they know. We must add that the book is illustrated, not quite as magically as it might be, but with

originality and a good choice of episode.