LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14931, 4 April 1914, Page 9

LITERARY GOSSIP.

All lovers of Stevenson's work will welcome tbo proposal mado by Mr C. H- Megson to raise a fund for making a path leading to tho novelist's grave. Mr C. H. Moors, in his book, "With Stevenson in Samoa," states that tho path to tho grave was practically impassable until tho German Governor, at his own expense, opened it up somewhat. Mr Moors says that tho path is now "in a serious tangle, and hardly get-at-able." Tho cost of making a suitable road is estimated at about £600.

The second volume' of tho Autobiography of Mr "Henry James is being published. It takes up tho story of his lifo from tho point whero it broko off in "A Small Hoy and Others," published in tho spring of last year. Not the least interesting- portion of tho "book will bo that roforring to his father's correspondence with various literary notabilities and friends. Tho letters to tho latter aro described by Mr Henry James as "happy illustrations of tho human beauty of tho writer's spirit and tho fino* breadth of "his expression." In one of these— the date is November -.'67—ho thus refers to an evening spent with Dickens:" "What a charming impression of Dickens the other night at the Nortons' dinner! How" innocent and honest and sweet ho .is maugre his lame 1 Fields was merely superb on the occasion, but Dickens was saintly." In tho concluding chapter of the volume wo read of a Sunday afternoon spent at North Banjt with Georgo Eliot, an evening with Ruskin at Denmark Hill, and, "rarest hour of all, perhaps, or, at least, tho strangest, a vision of D. G. Rossetti in the vernal dusk of Queen's House, Chelsea/—among his pictures, amid his poetry itself, his whole haunting 'aesthetic' " A singular record is that of Robert Atherton, -who rose from a ploughboy to bo a parson, and who is now a poet selling his verses on the streots of Manchester. The particulars appear in the "Millgate Monthly." "Robin o' Bobs," as this poet calls himself, was born at Liverpool in 1861j but was brought up Simonswood, whore ho ■worked as ploughboy on a farm. When, ho was about seventeen ho trae seized; with, the ambition to become a clergy-, man. He. .mentioned, his desire, but' received no encouragement. However, for the next five years hq studied hard at home in his spare time, with such scrap-books of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as. ho could lay his hands on. and when he was twenty-two he was enabled to enter tho theological college at Birkenhead, where he remained two years, passing all tho examinations and gaining the prize for Hebrew. Mr Atherton's first enracy was at Church Gresley, in Derbyshire; his second at Great Houghton; and then, in 1888, ho received tho living of Bolnhurst, in Bedfordshire, where ho stayed for sixteen years. How Mr Atherton came to leave the ministry is a long) story. However, ho returned to Liverpool, and about five years ago settled in Manchester. Those five years have taught him that Manchester thinks more of cotton than poetry. "My heart is in my verse," said "Robin," "and I thought that a poet had only to come in hie simple way, and in simple garb, and ho would bo welcomed. But," he added, sadly, "I know different now. I am still doing nothing, thougjh I believe that I could do good work." "Villago Lifo and Feeling," Mr Atherton's book of verse, was published about 1901. The volume lias rooeived many flattering notices, ono reviewer describing him as "The new Burns," and soveral expressing astonishment at his versatility. But one cannot live on compliments, and it is not everyone who will pay half a crown for a volume of verse. So "Robin o' Bobs" has prepared about a dozen penny booklets of proso and poetry, and, by dint of Living the very simple lifo and hawking his yer&o in thp streets, ho is enabled to jog along, though never losing heart that his "ship" will some day arrive. A companion volume to that already published ho hopes some day to be able to issue. _ Mr TCdward Marston. until recently head of the famous publishing firm of Sampson Low, Marston and Co., who ha*s just entered his ninetieth year full of vigour'and tho joy of lifo, records an interesting incident of tho j novelist, Mr Thomas Hardy (says the "Daily Mail"). After holding tho-mar-ket firmly for years, Mr Hardy's grip began to relax, and he entered the field of realism with all his strength. But ar/parently doubting whether Sampson Low and Marstoii. who had ions: his works, would risk "Tess of the d'XJrbervilles," ho went elsewhere with great success. Afterwards he wrote Mr 3farston a charming letter, in which ho ended by saying, "1 hope that the situation which hns arisen, as if it wore by accident, may not interfere with our old-established friendship." And, despite tho loss of Mr Hardy'e books, which, Mr Marston says, sell less only than these of Mr Hall Caino, Miss Victoria Cross, and Mrs Florence Barclay (what company the great man is in!), tho friendship has continued to this day. It is doubtful whether any living man other than Mr Marston can boast of having met and known, often intimately, the following gallery of wellknown writors: —3Lacaulay, Victor Hugo, Bulwer Lytton, Wendell Holmes, J. A. Fronde, Sir Edwin Arnold, Mrs Beecher Stowe, William Black, W. Clark Ruesell. George MaeDonald, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins, R. D. Blackmore, John Bright, H. M. Stanley, Walter Besant, Jean Ingelow, and J." R. Lowell. Victor Hugo, according to Mr Marston, was "an autocrat" to whom publishers had to go hat in band and Uiko what tho "god" save theai without seeing manuscripts or buying anything except the author's assurance. Charles Reado was an excellent business man. He lived up to tho title of "Hard Cash" in negotiating for the publication of that work; and in the

end printed it himself, finding oat from Sampson Low and Mansion tho lowest cost of paper, and driving a good bargain with the printers. Mr .\larston earned tho undying gratitude of W. Clark Rnssoll by paying the then unknown sea novelist £25 for a work in three volumes. Book-publish-ing, Mr Marston says, is one of the most speculative of businesses. A deal • in Victor Hugo taught him this early in life. "The Toilers of tho Sea" beinß a groat success, Sampson Low ami ; Marston paid £1500 for the English i rights of "Ninety-three," four times { the sum paid for tho former work. It* was a failure, and the firm just escaped* a heavy loss.