LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 43, 20 February 1926, Page 22

LITERARY.

Sir John Martin -Harvey, the eminent English actor, in speaking before the Canadian Club in Montreal, declared that the best league of nations-was that of the British Empire, but that to be complete it needed the United States. He roused his audience (says the' "Christian Science Monitor"), by reciting some verses in praise of England, written in answer to the notorious "Hymn of Hate." At the conclusion of the applause, Sir Martin remarked quietly that the beet of the point wasthat the verses were written by an American.

THE MOTHER OF THE BENSONS.

Since .the publication of "Margaret Ogiivie/f Barrier filial testimonial, of many years ago, the public has been, a little ,wary concerning biographies of the revered female parent, the impression being that there is usually a little too much of eon, while mother, though theoretically esteemed, is rather the "fool of the piece." In "Mother" (Hodder and Stoughton), Mr. E. F. Benson keeps to Mβ parent very well in the beginning, gets away from her in the ■middle and faithfully returns to her in the end, which, after aU, may lie intended as symbolical of filial life in general. However, we have- of Mr. Benson just possibly what she would not; have disliked the public to know, from the time .when the eleven-year-old girl was almost courted by a somewhat) surprising cleric afterwards to be Archbishop, to the later feebler years when she would'invite her sons to "totter Tound the" garden with a tortoise,", with some self reference or desire to'institute a League for the Utilisation of Waste Products, the said products, being ladies, over sixty-five years of age. Her love affair may be summed up in the phrase used by her during her engagement: "I was happy when I knew Edward' to be happy, and when I wasn't with him." Nevertheless the marriage was a happy one. Her relations with her children were equally untypical of the ordinary mother. "She thought, as far as I can guess, that it. was wonderfully clever of. us all,to write so many books, and she had a home for them all in the -bookcase of her sitting-room. There was an Arthur - shelf and a Hugh-shelf and a Fred-shelf, and because these propagating volumes were his-sons' she exercised a savage ■ guardianship over them, and would never lend her copies. But they didn't give her joy, because she' did not agree with the standpoint from which any of them was written." Her tolerance is one' of the most striking features of Mrs. Benson's character as when Hugh joined another church. • "She never felt the smallest touch of regret, for that would have implied that she wished bis development other than it was." Surely a fine stand to be" taken by a woman very pronounced in her own beliefs. Finely told, because without self-consciousness, is the story of the family's easy yielding up of Hugh's iegacy to hie church, though mother and brothers might have claimed it, the priest-eon's will being unwitnessed. The style of the book is worthy of its author, and there are many amusing touches concerning life ac it was in late Victorian times. ASHES OF EMPIRE. NOTABLE ROYAL REMINISCENCES. As a very small child a German princess remembers "a very, old, whitehaired general, .with bowed, shaking head and, watery, red eyes," to whom everybody showed the greatest deference. It was the Austrian Marshal, Radetsky. Years later, the year of her marriage, she saw the German troops return: from' the victorious war with France. ."Oh! that was a home-coming —sun, and roses, and the joy of youth! . ;■ ':■'.:■ Our .German people at the zenith of intoxicating power!" Fifty years later, a widow, ehe saw, in the same place, another return. "Floating in a cold grey sky, the setting eun stood lustfelese over the Rhine plain. I was returning over the hill from a walk. Down in the valley road below mc came slowly round the corner a grey serpentine column. .' . . They were horses, little and foreign-looking, and they were drawing forage carts. Tired eoldriere were seated on them or leading ! the horses. It is a long, long procession,' dull and colourless; in . ghostly fashion it drew near, and nearer. My heart stood still. 'Where do you come from?' I ' asked the first arrival, in a low tone. He lifted woeetricken eyes to mine,- and his lips formed the words: 'We come from* France.' . They went on their way. Paralysed I gazed, after them, .and the grey shadows of night closed down on the desolate picture." ' \|You will have observed that there is more than average literary quality in this description!» The writer is Princess Marie Erbacb-Schonberg, born Batten berg, member of a family, well known in flic Empire. One brother \vas. the husband of Princess Beatrice. Moved by the criticism of English papers, he volunteered for service in West Africa, and died flhere. His daughter is Queen of Spain. ' Another brother' was Prince Louis, who was First Sea Lord at the Admiralty when war broke out. A third brother was the gallant, but ill-starred, Alexander oi Bulgaria, who was driven from his kingdom by Russia, backed by Bismarck. How much better, it would have been for; Bulgaria-if he had not given place to the foxy Ferdinand. It will be gathered that- Princess- Marie has known all the European Royalties. She writes Of them with knowledge, shrewdness and discretion. We get interesting glimpses of the English, German, Russian and -other Courts. • There is much about Queen-Victoria and her family; including a remark of .the present King, made in the midst of the suffragette movement: 'In grandmama's'time all these things would have been quite impossible. England has only been really great in the reigns of three, women— Victoria, Anrie and Elizabeth." There is a very ably-written account of' the wedding of King Alfonso and Princess (Ena, when, the bride returned from church after haying been nearly killed by a bomb. She had Mood on her wedding dress, and though "incredibly self-controlled," she kept on repeating: "I saw a man without: any i legs." There is much, too, about,the tortuousness of Balkan intrigues, in which,, and.in^ other respects, this book is a contribution _to ihistory. We see Bismarck supporting Russia in getting rid of Alexander of Bulgaria, and then reproaching him, in liis newspaper, with cowardice! ..-'"•. These memoirs are-tentirely free from both arrogance -and scandal. The pictures of court life are as pleasant.as we have seen. To the writer the war was a tragedy that, should 'have been averted. "The madness grows—grows slowly, infecting everyone.. Immoderate confidence of victory—contempt of the enemy. . ... Oh!, my poor Fatherland!" Such.-was her entry on August 20, 1914. If Princess Marie's attitude had prevailed in high places there would have been no war. The volume is published by Allen and Unwin. '

Did Kipling write a verse on Dunedin, and where and when? v f 'First, fairest, fabulously rich, ' < - In men/ in money, and. In women who bewitch, Dunedin sits 'midst ease and smiles. We have read this twice lately in newspapers—once in an article in the "Christian Science Monitor" written by an enthusiastic traveller—-and we would like to know the history of it. Of course it is quite impossible to have as yet a real biography of the late Dowager Queen, and curiously enough.. "Queen Alexandra, the Well Beloved," by Elizabeth Villiers (Stanley Paul), is not. even as outspoken, as many articles written on the subject during Queen Alexandra's .lifetime. For instance there is but a bare mention of' Mks' Charlotte.'. Knollys and her slaving her Royal mistress , life from fire on one occasion, but no allusion to the great devotion shown by that lady when she gave up Tier own marriage because "Alix" could not do without her. For those, however, who wish to-khow. many of the anecdotes ,that have.■,■ clustered round a great name, tin's book, well got up and illustrated, will be ing. We read, that Alexandra actually met her future husbaiid ■ when she was a doll-nursing child, and that being in a contrary mood, the small heir refused to see her until assured she was a viking's daughter, being proportionately disappointed when she proved to be "only a little girl, but very pretty." In later years her portrait was diplomatically, put before him merely as an example of' this new art of photography," and he immediately: asked the name; of the young, lady who came out so splendidly from the ordeal of an art then so crude. Her creation of fashions such as the princess gown and bonnet, the "Alexandra limp" .through her own lameness, the institution of Rose • Day, her many charities and thoughtful acts of personal kindness, are; all told or retold. New to many is the story that when King Edward (as the Prince of WalesT lay in his serious illness, she asked to be included in the prayers at Sandringham Chapel, the name of a stableboy at Sandringham ill with the same disease. - ■■'

"THE ENGLISH OF'THE LINE »

.MR. BOOK OF yERSE. (By W.G.M.) Patriotic love of a keen, eye for the beauties of nature, and an ability to link observation with reflection are the main 'features, of Mr. Alan E. Mulgan'a book of verse, "The English of the Line, and Other Verses." Technically, the writer displays considerable skill in the handling, of difficult' metres, a scholarly sense of the value of words and the right relation' of sound and association to expression, and above all a restraint that betrays an intimate acquaintance with the best literary models. Many of the lines are more reminiscent of the clear cut, carefully chiselled' phrasing of a workman .like Matthew Arnold than of the rich imagination of a poet like Tennyson. They are not always "inevitable?; in places they show poetic talent rather than inspiration. But it is talent of a high order, and the ', first poem, "The English of the Line," is worthy to take its place'with the best patriotic poems in our language. It is, perhaps, the only poem likely to have a wide popularity; but it is assured of that wherever heroic deeds have power to etir the heart. If England, crowned and towering, her brow o'er-tbpplng • far ; The heights of past endeavour In her long long test of war, \ Can rise to awful greatness with the weight of so much wrong, . What may not England win to, if she makes her life a song. And flowers where now she festers, and loves where now she fears, And the English walk like brothers down the peril of the.years? So here's to ne'er forgetting how the English 'strove and died; The men who fought from Mons to Mons and would not be denied, The rocks that broke the first gray waves, . . the spears that waiting long, t Bore down the long* red slopes''of doom the shattered hosts of. wrong, > ■ The saviours of-a trembling world the guards of yours and mine, Those unherolc heroes all—the English of the Line! We were tempted to quote more. The whole poem is worthy of a place in our best anthologies of national verse. It is a noble tribute to the cheerful, instinctive, unremembered heroism of those whose names, forgotten, live for evermore. It will rank with Pakenham Beatty's "Wreck of the Birkenhead," a wreath to sacrifice, "nui'la non donandus lauru." ■ ; Of the other poems, that entitled "Dead Timber" is a contrast between "The tall dead trees so bare against the sky," and the "crowning domes that take the morning's brightness," of older lands "by •lege.nd-whispering seas." The phrasing of • this: poem is . singularly felicitous. "The Ship of Wise Men" tolls of the ardour of youth and fhe "wind of young, desire." The verses "Inarticulate" are a tribute to the "mute inglorious Miltons" of the world. "Peace"', is a meditation on the peaceful New Zealand homes "at distance from the battle-cry," peaceful because ■ • v " us and the swords of hate March legions of the ; vassal seas. "The Riro-Riro" tells' of the grey warbler, one of the.sweetest of our singing birds, in verse to match its song. The poem "England, ,, finally expresses the love which all her sons and daughters feel-for. ~ by-way, wood and dosing-lea; The clustered village deep in blossomings Dim shrines that lose* themselves in Heaven's arch. .. It voices that charm that has power To draw the wandering tides of England home. "Grief and Pride" and "The Unknown" are respectively odes to the South Pole party in 191«, and the Unknown Warrior of the Abbey. They both have a stately movement and restraint of phrase in keeping with the subject. The sonnet on "Beethoven" is a slow movement in keeping with the theme, "like slow procession at the evening hour." The lines entitled "Futility" and "A Picture" are J notable for their fine phrasing. "The Squatter" is: first cousin to "The Northern Farmer." He will flout .the spell of the wondrous ; days, and drone the sun to sleep With .'babble of clips- and breeding, an < endless tale, of sheep. . ' .! i ... . - . . - . "Auckland" contains some of the finest individual lines in the book, and the charm of her setting in the. "blue of the wMte-flowered water-ways, where the jewelled islands He," is matched .by the charm of the lines of her lover. We Had marked' many fine passages and lines for. quotation, many single' phrases like {'the wave that eighs for but space forbids. The 'verse is not* distinctively New Zealand, as so much Australian verse is distinctively Australian." It is that; but it is more. It is true poetry, akin to. all ages and lands, and if it makes us proud of country and our English blood,, it also gives cause for pride in our land to have' produced so true a singer. k '-fc r , ■■'~-. ■ ~