LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19930, 17 May 1930, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

from tho "Observer":— ''The Times" obituary of Lord Gladstone has the delightful comment that 'if there was a weed in his garden, he felt himself better employed in pulling it up than in making an after-lun-cheon speech." It is a quality all too rare in days When tha number of people with gardens is steadily diminishing; and there have been greater fames that wore much less attractive. One always felt of Lord Gladstone that lie was oppressed by the shadow of a groat name—as Andrew Lang oneo said of a hoy named Horatio Nelson, that ho was committed to a career of greatness before he was of an age to understand the nature of an obiication.

Sir Nigel Playfair has decided to call his autobiography "The Road to Hamhlersmith,'' as it was his work ,at the Hammersmith Lyvic that made his reputation as a theatrical manager.

Lady Rliondda is writing a series of articles in "Time and Tido" on the views and attitude of men writers to women, ano says iD the first article i— *

"Sir Shaw, Mr Wells, and Mr Boflnott want wAtlhing in all dlroctions when thoy come to dealing with that half o £ the human race to which themielves do not belong. It is dangerous enough that these peoplo should have the power to Suggest to us what we should be and how we should behave* when they are prescribing also for themselves, but that they should be—as they undoubtedly are—in a position to dictate to us the typo of person we should be. when they aro prescribing for a group to wlrlcli they never have boltmged, and to which they never, cuti belong, is not meroly terrifying, it is really liidlcrftllS.

"It is ft dreadful thought tlmt Mr Wfells and Mr Bennett nifty be manufacturing. hig •rt-hilst wo wait. It is not even (m entirely agreeablo thought that Mr Sb&W may be doing so< And, indeed, there can be Mttle doubt that in actual {act Mr Shaw Is the one who really needs Witching. Few intelligent people take Wells seriously on women. His idea of their place and function in the world in fed very clear. Bis woman, even the most ch&rmiitg of them, attractive as these Often are, shriek to the eye that the; have been bred from prejudice out of fear. "As tot Arnold Benetttt's women—at least hie later ones—they are most of them too cheap to be worth troubling about, But the Shavian Women are possible and even attractive. Seal women might very well start making themselves over in the shape of Shaw's tydmen. the world might very well accept, in fait, it has to some extent accepted, Shaw's theories abbttt women and about tho relations of ihon and women. That Is why Shaw's gefteralißatlous on these matters want watching."