The Bookfellow

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 271, 13 November 1909, Page 13

The Bookfellow

(Copyright.—All Eights Reserved.)

(■Written for the " Auckland Star "

by A. G. Stephens.)

Our poets' ages. And poetesses': they have been telling tales unblushingly! Yet we have been -concea-ling privy knowledge—saving their faces, glossing their grey hairs, holding them Muses ever fair (or dark) and young. And. Miss Blanche Edith Baughan, of Canterbury, is 39—she says so. And Miss Jessie Mackay, of Ohristchureh, is 4tf— she declares it solemnly. And M;ss Dora Wilcox, now of London, is 3C. Mra. James Glenny Wilson, of Rangitikei, is even 61. Only Miss Mary Caroline Col-borne-Veel. of Christchure'h, k -mute; and Macs Margaret A. Sinclair, of• Auckland, is hor companion oyster. The most obnoxious kind of cynic will dare to add two to the figures given. For our own p:>rt, we take five off. Of the others, the mere men, Arthur H. Adams acknowledges 37; Johannes Carl Andersen, 30: Hubert Church. 52; Archibald Ernest Currie, 25 (the baby!); John Liddell Kelly, 50; Will Lawson, 33; William Pornb.-r Reeves, 52; David Mac Donald Ross, ii: Arnold Wall, 40; and I>avid McKce "Wright, 40. There are others upon whom the limelight is not momentarily cast. " j New Zealand is a country of readers. ! not yet a country of writers; yet these ' names stand already for a large body of creditable work. It is work that ; continues. Messrs. Whiteombe and Tombs have in hand for publication a i selection of verse ; by Miss Maud Pea- ! cock, of Auckland, and a collection by. Miss Jessie Maekay. It will be noted that the ladies nre taking their full share of thp lyre, and their song, too, is not the least worthy.

These three stories occur in a newlypublished book, "How to be Happy Though Civil." First: Three bo 3's from Eton, Harrow, and Winchester were in a room when a lady -entered. The Eton boy asked languidly if some fellow ought not to give a chair to the lady; the Harrow boy slowly brought one, and the Winchester boy deliberately sat down on it. Second: Talleyrand, when carving at his dinner parties, graduated his manners to the rank of his guests in I this way:—To a prince of royal-blood: 1 "May I have the honour of offering your j Royal Highness a little beef?" To a 'duke: "Monseigneur. permit mc to offer ! you some beef." To a marquis: "Mar- : quis. may I cut you a little beef?" To ! a viscount: "Viscount, have some beef?" i To a baron: "Baron, some beef?" To ] an 11 n tit led gentleman: "Some beef?" i To his secretary: "Beef?" "When there i was present a person inferior even to I his secretary, to him Talleyrand did not ! say so much as a word; he sinvply i looked tit the man. and pointed the j carving-knife nt the beef interrogatively. : Third: "I hope that it was not your husband that gave you that bla-ck eye?" I remarked a doctor to a. poor woman. ! "Xo, sir," was the reply: "my husband is more like a friend than a husband." I 1 The "English Review." elsewhere quoted, remarks that the book-selling demand for long novels has led to the* virtual extinction of what is almost the most beautiful length for any history of an episode—as distinguished from the history of an "affair" involving the life-stories of many persons— that of between 30,000 and 40,000 words. For this type of slory there is i practically no place for publication nt all in England now. It is too short to ] be published in volume form: bound up ! with other stories it becomes cattii logued with and unsaleable as "Sho.t I stories"; the magazines will not print j it. since it is too short to be a serial, and too long to go in one or two in- ! stnlments. "In consequence, and simply owing to commercial pressure, this I particular form is practically extinct.

my opinion because he is convinced it is worth" having, not because he hasn't one of his own; and, of course, he must have plenty of money for mc to spend." Then there is the difference of education: — Beatrice appeared much -amused at her companion's earnestness. "Bless you, what I know about Shakespeare isn't worth reading," she declared, with a laugh. "My governesses were always trying to drum long speeches of his into my head, and once I could reel off 'The quality of mercj T is not strained, , and 'All the world's a stage,' but I never could make out what good these accomplishments did mc. Of course, I've seen a good many of the Shakespeare plays acted, but then they cut out so much of the dull parts, and the scenery and the costumes are so splendid, that the Shakespeare part of it does not worry you at all, and you only feel virtuous and cultured for having been to something classical." Hedwig's eyes widened. "Is it possible?" she exclaimed. "At my school we u«ed to have Shakespeare class twice a week. We had aJI the plays classified, and went through them, with extensive notes, afterwards amplifying these, and in certain cases writing short essays.!' "I suppose by now you have convinced yourselves that Shakespeare was really German," Beatrice observed flippantly. "Personally. Literature with a big 'L' has never had the faintest interest for mc. and as for poptry, I think it's mostly drivel. Poets just ■.rrite rubbish to make it rhyme, iiiid people think it shows their superiority to admire it, and haven't the pluck to own that they'd infinitely prefer a thrilling novel." "Then what did you learn when you were young?" Hedwig asked. "Oh, heaps of things that I've found a million times more useful to mo than Shakespeare. I learnt to dance and ride when I was a baby, and golf and tetmis ami cards camo a little later. And then T learnt enough piano to play dance music, and to accompany my

vinced that England would be absolutely helpless in the case of invasion by a European Power, or combination of Powers. The English rely blindly upon their navy, but they do not seem to consider what would haepen if a large portion of their navy were called off to another part of the world, and a surprise landing ivere effected by the enemy." "But surely the English realise this?" "Theoretically they do. The place is ' swaraiped "with fiction on the subject of a German invasion of England. But in these romances England is always victorious in the end, and the Britisher smiles complacently as he shuts thel books and says, ' Of course, we have alwfeys managed to sqtuash the foreigner. , " "But 'how can they expect to do this in the future if they go on reducing their army?" Hedwig asked. She was flattered that Feldhausen should recognise in her an intelligent listener, though, as a matter of fact, the army is of such supreme interest in Germany that a man who would not credit the girls 'he meets with a brain above trivialities and Schwarmereien would still expect, and get, an appreciative interest from them when holding forth on military matters. "You have no -conception, gnadiges Fraulein, of the indifference of the average 'Englishman to his army and the question of the defence of his country. He may be shaken into a temporary interest by some appeal to his sensational love of novelty, but soon it flips down nnd <»ivps pla*e to a new excitement—the disappearance of some adventuress or a scandalo-ts divorce suit. As long as it is not looked upon as the natural and accepted thing for every Englishman to serve hi* country, but instpa<{ hr> has to ho bribed and feted and enroled into doinpf so, so lon<r will tliese intpnnittPivt, advertising outbursts of patriotism be absolutely futile." Later Hedwig's own opinion is expressed : "I as a foreigner coming into this milieu have been a.niazed at the utter

failure of 6/ novels (and 8/ may still be alleged the regular English, price) the fact that many novels are obviously not worth G/, by reason of deficient quantity as well a3 of inferior quality (and we who are asked only to pay 2/0 and 3/6 in "Colonial I/ibra'ries" have reached the sajne conclusion). So Heinemann's new fiction, for England, is 'being issued at 3/ or 4/ or 6/, according to actual content of reading matter; and the experiment is interesting. Even it may recoil upon buyers here, though Heinemann'e Colonial Library is to be maintained. The "English Review" has some pointed words to say on the general aspect, not without relevance to a local correspondent's recent reference to the esteem of letters in England. We are told that there is only one policy possible and commendable to publishers. It has consisted in publishing, when available, enormously popular but absolutely worthless writers, and devoting a certain portion of the profits made 'by these publications to the production of work that has literary merits and very small commercial attractiveness. The reviewer laments that worthless work sh. aid be popular, yet for that not the publisher but the public—the persons in high places, the preachers, the social reformers, and all the rest of those who have power to influence the public—■ are responsible. "'But complacently the public continues to steal the bread from the mouths of the heirs of men of letters, and to read halfpenny papers. In these islands literature has never come into its own— perhaps never will, perhaps never can. Probably it never can, since, our public being strictly utilitarian, it cannot be proved that reading imaginative literature ever led to the invention of a steamboat, the gaining of a new colony for the British Crown, the improvement of the morale of society, or the extension of the franchise. In -short, in the minds of engineers, empire-builders, and moral or social reformers in this country, imaginative literature occupies no place at ail. In France a. man will inscribe