Talk:Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases

Information about this edition
Edition:	New York:: Mcclure, Phillips & Co., 1906
Source:	Internet Archive & Project Gutenberg
Contributor(s):	ragpicker
Level of progress:
Notes:	"Produced by Charles Klingman" & pgdp.net. [Re-proofread in WS (just in case) and reformatted per WS standards.]
Proofreaders:	ragcleaner

Reviews

• "Sundry Novels," The Nation, 1 March 1906::

In 'Vrouw Grobelaar' lies waiting a genuine sensation for the' lover ot short stories. Unless the reviewer is at fault, they will recall to the reader the hour wherein he tasted his first Maupassant, and that other hour when the new Kipling swam into his ken. In the Boer Country of Africa there is a field rich in material, if more barbarous material than that of France and more limited than that of India, it still comprises its own folk-lore, its own animal-lore and legend, the savagery of primitive tribes, the tragedies of clashing civilization and barbarism, and, most characteristically of all, the creepy transition from the beast to the human. We have been made familiar with Africa's animal traditions of late, and have perhaps found them more interesting and instructive than entertaining. Stories of African pioneering, agriculture, and war have been freely granted us—good stories, too. But Mr. Gibbon has suddenly developed the African conte, masterly in form, in manner, in outcome. There are episodes of great beauty, climaxes of great skill, moments of great horror, but rarely an inartistic moment, never a tedious one.

Vrouw Grobelaar, who tells the stories, has a diction of surprising variety for a woman who could neither read nor write. If blemishes in the book are to be hunted for, here is perhaps one—that the excellent Vrouw at times speaks Stevensonian, and anon practises Hewlettry. Possibly nothing less would have conveyed the full aroma of "her leading cases." The story never suffers; the Vrouw does, a little, as a portrait, yet very little, since her personality is strong, and rises distinct and self-asserting to where beyond these voices of preciosity there is peace, the peace of consistency. "The muscle-rippled skin of him" does not undo the real Vrouw as disclosed in her maxim that "Garlic is a thing you must not play with; like sin, you can never undo It, whatever forgiveness you win"; or her discovery that "when a man meets a rebuff with silence and dignity, he is aging." The Vrouw is a creation. She suggests, possibly, not a person so much as the solidified experience of her world unspoiled by knowledge of any other. Marvellous are the stories she tells. The little Katje who hears and flouts them flutters. like a red poppy through the pages. She and the Vrouw's weird quips furnish the needed pin-points of light in the prevailing sternness, even awesomenesa, of the stories. They make the blood curdle, but it is a legitimate curdle, accompanied by assent and admiration.

• The Literary Digest, 12 May 1906—"A Vision-enlarging Group of Tales."

It is a notable fact that people used as material for stories always repudiate and reject the record. Cape Cod has not yet forgiven Sally McLean's "Cape Cod Folks." Newport and Tuxedo wrathfully deny the implications of "The House of Mirth." New England waves off Mary Wilkins Freeman, New Orleans will have none of G. W. Cable. California puts its tongue in its cheek at Bret Harte. With these precedents in mind, one wonders if the folk of the South-African veldt would relish themselves as presented in" Vrouw Grobelaar," by Perceval Gibbon.

Whether Mr. Gibbon has reflected the Kaffir and the Boer as they are, or whether he has touched the dull lives of the veldt with glamour and terror transcending experience—wherever he got these wild dramatic tales, we must thank him for a book showing new, strange heights and depths of these curious mortal hearts of ours so "piteously contrived for pain."

An unlettered but vastly wise old Boer woman tells the stories at her own hearthside, mostly in rebuke of an untoward generation growing up about her. The art and the psychology are masterful. There is no complexity, no laborious building-up of horrors, but every line adds might, every touch gives color; and each grim story gets a strangle-hold. The reader moves with these still people in the circle of vast, unseen, unforgetting powers. Spirits and witches are abroad. The devil stalks alert and thrifty. God is ever present, watchful, and jealous as over the Puritans in their stony fields.

The motifs are as striking as the new stars and trees of that far southern land. A man is dragged to death by his own son even as he in forgotten days had dragged his own father. One in delirium sees his wife's face, and goes through life pining for that shadowy unknown who is forever at his side. A pedler plays at calling up the dead, and the dead appear. A planter rides down a Kaffir child in the kraal, and is ridden down himself for his unrepented deed. A woman finds that her husband is a coward, and silently goes to death to help him keep his courage and his honor. A bushman leading a night fight against the baboons that come in armies to destroy the corn, in the morning has himself become a groveling, grinning baboon. These are some of the themes, and on the whole "Vrouw Grobelaar" presents the most gripping and vision-enlarging group of stories since Kipling's "Plain Tales from the Hills."

Almost without exception the critics praise the book. The Brooklyn Times says of it:: "It is many years since fiction of such unusual quality has appeared." The Boston Herald believes that that "the author's work has earned him the title of 'the Kipling of the Kraal.'" According to the New York Times Saturday Review, "the author and the Vrouw Grobelaar have a fine sense of humor and a deft and delightful way of putting things." The Washington Star, however, is of the opinion that "were it not for the humorous touches which Mr. Gibbon adds to his text it would be too uniformly gruesome to be acceptable.

• "Novel Notes" in The Bookman (UK) December 1905.

These striking tales of the veldt appear in collected form with the reflected glory of their serial publication in "Maga." It is high praise, but not a whit too high, to say that they rank with the very best of the famous "Tales from 'Blackwood.'" Among recent short stories it is difficult, if not impossible, to think of any that equal them, whether in regard to their dramatic force and interest or their very remarkable literary finish. At first sight many readers will quarrel with the title of the book; but after perusal most, we imagine, will applaud Mr. Gibbon's choice. For in the "Vrouw Grobelaar" Mr. Gibbon has achieved a bit of brilliant characterisation. The Vrouw is a distinct addition to "the line" in the portrait gallery of English fiction. She is the supposed narrator of all the stories in this volume, and her strong personality—a wonderful blend of shrewdness, cunning, humour, and courage—gives a unity to the volume greater than will be found in most of the carefully constructed plots of present-day romance. The stories in themselves are of extraordinary interest. They are an indispensable text-book for a knowledge of Boer life, and Mr. Gibbon bids fair to become our chosen interpreter of South Africa as Mr. Kipling is of Anglo-India. That Mr. Gibbon owes much to Mr. Kipling is undoubted. But he is no servile imitator. His stories, both in form and in matter, breathe a refreshing originality, and we are much mistaken if they do not indicate a great reserve force. It is at once their merit and their promise that they are never for a moment weak or diffuse. In a good short story, as in a sonnet, every line must tell. Mr. Gibbon has realised this, and his labours with the file have resulted in a piece of undoubted artistry. Than Vrouw Grobelaar and Katje, we have not recently encountered two more delightful characters in fiction.