THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18135, 26 July 1924, Page 11

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY.

(spxcuiiLT warrnw tob "thb paias.")

By A. H. Gbtnxjno.

LXXI.—ON THE GARNEfITS. The announcement that Mr David Garnett, author of "Lady Into Fox," and winner of the "Hawthornden" prize, and the "James Tait Black Memorial Prize," "has written a new hook called "A Man in the Zoo," both books being illustrated with wood cuts by R. A. Garnett, sent me searching into the literary ancestry of a famous family. "William Garnett, paper manufacturer of Otley, Yorkshire, had three sons—Richard, born in 1789, died in 1850; Jeremiah, horn in 1795, died in 1870; and Thomas, born in 1799, died in 1878. Of these three brothers, Richard was a philologist, Jeremiah a journalist, and Thomas a manufacturer and naturalist. Richard was originally intended for a commercial career; but while at home, assisting his father in the factory, he was studying for the Church. He started as a 'schoolmaster, and m his leisure time he learned sufficient Greek and Latin and divinity to secure ordination at the hands of the Archbishop of York. He made the acquaintance of Southey, who called him "a very remarkable person," adding "He did not begin to learn Greek till he was twenty, and he is now, I believe, acquainted with all the European languages of Latin or Teutonic origin, and with sundry Oriental ones. I do not know any man who has read so much which you would not expect him to have read."

In 1836, Richard Garnett was presented: to the living of Chebsey, near {•Stafford; this he relinquished two years later on being appointed assistantkeeper of printed books at the British Museum. Garnett succeeded Henry Francis Cary, the translator of Dante, and thereby hangs a tale of a bitter controversy. Some eight years earlier Cary, being an unsuccessful' applicant for a vacancy in the antiquities department of the British Museum, was appointed assistant-keeper of printed books; and he was entrusted with the poetry section of a classified catalogue of the library then in counse of preparation. The death of his 111 1832 affected Cary's health, and when, five years later, the post of chief librarian of printed books became vacant, he was deemed physically unfit for promotion by all save his family and himself. The appointment of a foreigner, Antonio Panizzi, to the vacancy raised a great outcry, ana Cary resigned, thus creating the vacancy which Richard Garnett filled. Garnett was twice married, his second wife being Rayne, daughter of John Wreakß, Esa., of Sheffield, and of that union was born on February 27th, 1855, in Beacon street, Lichfield, a son also called Eichard. who was destined to follow in his father's footsteps.

Richard Garnett the second, was only three years old when his father removed to' London on becoming assistantkeeper, of printed books at the British Museum. "Young Richard Garnett showed exceptional intellectual precocity as a boy." writes Sir Sidnev Lee in the "Dictionary of National Biography." "He inherited his father's faculty for., acquiring languages. Before he was fourteen he hnd read for his own amusement the whole of the 'Poetafi S?enici Graeci,' Deodorus SicuIns's History, the works of Bovardo. Ariosto, and Tasso, and the stones of Tjeck and Hoffmann. All his life he studied not only the classics but tho literature of Prance, Germany, Italy, and Spain." After the deaEfi of his father in 1850, young Richard Garfiett. thanks to the good offices of Antonio Panizzi, secured a position as assistant in the British Museum Library; henceforth his career was closely associated with the British Museum. After twenty years of. subordinate labours, he was appointed in 1875 assistant keeper of printed books and superintendent of the reading-room. In 1882 Richard Garnett was an unsuccessful candidate for the Librariajn- - ship-of the Bodleian Library, Oxford: but his ambitions were fullv satisfied he was promoted to the headship of his department in the British Museum. In 1883 he was made LLJD. by the Edinburgh University, and he was made C.B. in 1895. He died at his home at Hampstead, London, in 1906.

In 1889. a year before the regulation age for retirement, Dr. Bichard Garnett resigned his post at the British Museum, after 4St years of service, and lar(2jely on acount of his wife's failing health. Besides his contributions to poetic literature, his prose work was prolific and versatile, and lie wrote extensively and on all manner of subjects for a number of periodicals. His most important books were "Belies of Shelley," published in 1862, and "The Twilight of £he Gods," in 1903; he also collaborated with Mr Edmund Gossein the four-volume "Illustrated Becord of English Literature," the first and second volumes being the fruit of Garnett's pen. He also lent liis name as editor of "The International Library of Famous Literature," a pretentious anthology organised by an American syndicate, and issued in Great Britain in 1901. Bichard Garnett married in 1863 Olivia Nainey, daughter of Edward Singleton, of County Clare, Ireland, his wife dying in 1903. The family consisted of three sons and three daughters, and the father's literary proclivities descended to the second son, who was born in 1868.

Like his father, Mr Edward Garnett exhibits in his writings a considerable versatility; he is critic, dramatist, and satirist, but he is likely to be known to fame as the man who encoufaged Joseph Conrad to persevere with his first book, "Almayer's Folly." The way in which that story was first conceived, afterwards persisted in, and the strange adventures whicli overtook the manuscript are delightfully recounted by Conrad himself in "A Personal Becord," but for some reason he omits to mention the part played by Mr Edward Garnett in the publication of the book. The omission, however, is supplied by Mr Richard Curie in his study of Joseph Conrad. Mr Curie, lamenting that so little good criticism of Conrad's work has been published, says: "But, indeed, it is to Edward Garnett that readers of Conrad owe the greatest debt. For he was the first to discover him—if I must use such an offensive expression. That his earliest work should have fallen into the hands of this eclectic and uninsular critic is something to be thankful for. For Conrad has told me himself that if 'Almayer's Folly' had been rejected, he would never have written another book." To which Mr Curie adds: — f , In 1894 Conrad finally left the. sea. Ho had never, folly recovered from a severe fever that had invalided him from the Congo, and his health was now more or less broken. He did not know what to do with himself (he had .still some idea of going to sea again], but almost 'as an after thought, he sent in to Fisher Unwin the novel which he had begun about 1889, and which he had completed in odd mo--wnt»—the novel of "Almayer'a Folly.

After waiting for three or four » he heard, to his intense surprise, , ■was accepted (Edward Garnett .. was res;onsibie), and from hence life is mainly the history of his

Apart altogether frorn his encouragement of Conrad, Mr Edwarf Garciett merits attention for bis own , ant has been said that his mo P i(jnwin work as ''reader for tisn has been the discovery of nota y y ers; but his dramatic -jrial "The Breaking Point," of Jeanne D'Arc, "have served attention. The satires „ 1919 under the title Papa. . fc created a literary ; by hi 5 critical work that Ed keen i-ett is destined to live. H hig student of Russian bte^ tU r^} stoy are studies of Tnrgenev and JJUr toy amontr the best oftheir wholehearted direction he has had tb co-operation of his wife Mrs Garnett, who has done Buswork in making the classics sian literature available to D the est B of kife KU'as-a translations; Mrs Cons.twee G«irnett was the first to translate the Russian, and her translat to-day recognised as both a c f authorised. In the population the great masterpieces °f an( j literature, Mr Edward• GaroJ* Mrs Constance Garnett- have work of the highest importance, sin it is achmittfid tnat> * of tie. compknties of the present situation m R^sia, a knowledge of the outstanding of the Russian writers is essential.

Tfce wideness of Mr Edward Harnett's literarv sympathies is seen in his booK of criticisms and appreciations, issnea a couple of years ago under the title of "Friday Nights." The contents include essays on Nietzsche, and W. U.. Hudson's Nature Books, on Tchekhov and liis art, and on Ibsen and the English. There follow three pap®" each on Mr Joseph Conrad and Mr U. M. Doughty, and Mr Garnett's versatility is illustrated in his dealing consecutively with writers as far apart as D. H. Lawrence, Richard Jefferies, Henry Lawson, Sarah Orme_ Jewett, and Robert Frost, the American poet. The final essays in this volume contrast American and English fiction, and American and English criticism, together with some critical notes on American jpoetry, and a comment on two American novelists, Joseph Hergesheimer and Sherwood Anderson. Mr Garnett's last word—and it is a wise one-i—defines the" duties and acknowledges the limitations of "The Contemporary Critic."

The quality of Mr Garnett'a criticism may be judged by his essay on "Henry Lawson and the Democracy," which has new interest, in the fact that since it was written in 1896. Lawson has crossed the Divide; and that he is having a resurrection in the issue in pocket reprint form of all his prose and poetry. Mr Garnett. holds the opinion that Lawson will not live by his poetry. "H's verse, to put it biimtly, is the verse of a thousand and one vigorous versifiers of to-day, writiner humorously or picturesquely it mav be. but producine work thereby which shares the stamp of the literary artisan rather than that of the artist." Mr Garnett, however, while criticising Lawson's verse as that of a third-rate writer, exalts Lawson's prose as "that of a writer who represents a continent." His concluding eulogy is characteristic:

If Lawson's- tales fail to live in another fifty- years—and where will be much of Stevenson's, Hardy's, and Henry James's fiction then?—it will be because they have too little beauty of form, and there is too ranch crudity and roughness in their literary substance. Henry Lawson's matter is more interesting than his form, end matter in general only survives through its form. This admitted, it may he claimed for Lnwßon that he of the Australian writers beßt pictures for us and interprets democratic Australia to-day, and that he ia one of the very few genuinely democratic writers that the literature of "Greater Britain" can show.

In the May issue of Mr John Middleton Murry'a charming periodical, "The Adelphi," Mr Garnett has a paper on "The Work of Allan Monkhouse." I possess a book of Allan Monkhouse's which I prize because it bears the imprint of Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and is dated 1894; the "List of Books in Belles Lettres," published by that now defunct, firm in March, 1894, and inserted at. the end of the volume, is an education on the literature of thirty years ago. Mr Monkhouse's opinions on Meredith's poems and plays, on George Borrow, on Turgenev, and Ibsen, and on Stevenson's and Henley's plays are interesting to read after the lapse of three decades. Mr Garnett begins by saying:—"Two of the contemporary creative talents whose works have received least recognition in proportion to their merits are Mr Charles Marriott and Mr Allan Monkhouse." I remember twenty yeais ago when Mr Marriott's -first novel, "The Column," created a literary sensation, since when I seem to have lost sight of him, although he has a score or so of stories to his credit. In 1915, he published "Davenport," a story with an occult trend which held my attention, and his two later stories, "The Grave Impertinence" and "An Order to View," I regard as a couple of the cleverest and ablest novels of recent "years. With the work of Allan Monkhouse, his plays and stories, I have only a slight acquaintance, but one effect of Mr Garnett 's criticism will be to lead me to study them more carefully.

I now come to the Garnetts of the present generation: David Garnett and R. A. Garnett, author and illustrator respectively : of "Lady Into Fox,_ and "A Man in the Zoo." I take it, though I havo no absolute authority for the statement, that David Garnett is the son of Mr Edward Garnett. I have seen it stated that K. A. Garnett, who is responsible for the exquisite wood-cuts, is Mrs David Garnett, formerly Miss Eachel Marshall, well-known as illustrator of a of children's books, including A Jtiae on a Booking Horse,'' " The Sappy Testament," and "The Imp of Mischief." There is not space to discuss in detail Mr David Garnett's charming extravaganzas. "Lady Into * ox is a story of a lady who, sudden y turned into a fox, is eventually killed in her husband's arms by a pac o hounds. "A Man in the Zoo is the story of a man who became an inmate of the zoological gardens. i>o books have excited controversy, ana critics differ considerably as to ei literary merit. The best test of t i popularity is that they have _ een parodied by the issue of "Gentleman Into Goose," a brochure thus described: —

Gentleman into Goewe, being the and true account of Mr Timothy ' Gent., of Puddleditch in Dorset, that was changed to a Great Grey Gail er a the Wysh of his Wife. How, though » Gander, he did Wear Breeches and smoke a pipe. How he near Lost his Life to lna Dog Tyger. You have, also, an account of his Gallantries with a verting to Bead, with many other Surprising Adventures, full of Wonder am d Moment-, and a Full Relation of the Manner of his Dismal End. Worthy to he had all Families for a Warning by all Bachelors intending damage, by Christopher Ward. With Wooden Engravings by C. W. and C. W. Junior.