NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20334, 5 September 1931, Page 13

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

T* ' WILLIAM ARCHER. William Archer. Life, Work, and Friendships. . By Lieut.-Colouel 0. Archer. Allen and TXnwin. 451 pp. (16/- net.) William Archer's grandfather settled at Tolderodden, a property near Larvik, in Norway. It was "the first place I can remember, and the last that I shall forget," Archer wrote, long after his early visits. Here he learned Norwegian and lost his English; then, back in Scotland with his parents, he forgot Norwegian, which later he had to reacquire; but Ibsen had captured his English missionary. Archer had seen in the Norwegian shop windows "books by one Henrilc Ibsen." He overheard a lady saying that '' Love's Comedy'' was "glimrendo vittig":

"Hullo!" thought I, "if there is anything brilliantly witty in Norwegian I must read it," and X bought the paper-covered book; little* thinking how much that series of papercovered books was to mean for me. I'rorn

"Love's Comedy" 1 went on to "Tlie League of Youth," "Brand," "Peer Gvnt," "The Vikings," "The Pretenders" —all that the poet had yet published. "Emperor and Galilean" fbe says elsewhere] was then his latest work. When the "World-Historic Drama" came into my hands, I remember locking myself up in a little bare hutch of a bathing house by the fjord, in order to devour its ten acta in the luxury of unbroken solitude. By the connivance of my grandmother's housekeeper (an old ally of mine) I laid in provisions to enable me, if necessary, to stand a siege. Even in those early days, you see, Ibßenite and Ishmaelite meant much the same thing. But how I should have stared had I foreseen that such a word as "Ibsenite" would ever be added to the English language!

Not only a bookworm, as his aunt at Tolderodden described him, but an amateur of tho theatre:

I was a country-bred child, and none of my family had any connexion with the stage, or any particular interest in it; yet I cannot remember the time when the word "theatre" had not a strange fanciijation for me. I did not in the least know what a theatre was, but I knew it was one .of the things I most wanted to know.

The first theatrical entertainment, he saw was "Pepper's Ghost," which filled him with the ambition to possess a toy theatre:

The ambition was never realised, for J could no more have bought one than I could have bought Drury Lane, and my mechanical genius was quite inadequate to constructing one. IL got the length, however, of tracing tho costume-plates in Knight's "Pictorial Shakespearo," pasting them on cardboard, colouring them, and cutting them out; but, alas! the cardboard invariably curled up, so that not only Richard the Third, but my whole dramatic company, seemed afflicted with incurable spinal curvature. I must have been twelve or thirteen before I saw the inside—or for that matter the outside—of a real theatre.

What lie saw tlieu was Wallace's "Maritana," and "the daring and wit of Don C6zar de Bazan seemed to me incomparable—almost superhuman." was bent; interesting, also, to see how its growth was made easy.- After faking his degree at Edinburgh and travelling, he was reading for the Bar in London and writing articles for an Encyclopedia, but watching keenly for a chance in dramatic criticism. When Charles Dillon and Miss Wallis played "Othello'.' at Drury Lane,, the Press almost ignored the production. . Archer wrote to the "London Figaro," protesting against such neglect, while columns of space were devote'd to valueless performances. The editor sent tickets for the next Drury Lane production—"Hamlet" —inviting'him to provide "a practical demonstration of his critical capabilities." The, practical demonstration lasted for oVer forty' years, but extended far beyond the writing of theatrical' notices. Archer's critical work was more, than comment; it was fertile, constructive, urgent, and the best evidence of that, perhaps, is his work on Ibsen and for Ibsen. Ho did not take up this cause alone. He had Walkley with him, and Shaw, and Gosse; but he was not only the most persistent' and laborious advocate —as witnesses his complete, translated edition of Ibsen—but the most skilful and effective. He was an admirable, critic, not doctrinaire, not a frigid highbrow, not a rliapsodist, not a wit seeking'his opportunities, but perhaps the best modern exemplar of a critical method and manner at once steadfast-and .flexible, of an artistic sensibility which seemed like an intellectual sixth sense. It was not strictly rational: it. was not. emotional; yet it belonged to the rather than to the blood. - A sidelight here is his own: •

Too late I hare come to life a little. A tree awakens in me a vague reverence, a flower a shame-faced worship; and by ® feelings the intensity of life is indefinitely enhanced for me. Was I, forty years ago, such a young dolt as to- be quite Inaccessible to themf I donbt whether my educators, on the Day of Wrath, will be #Me to plead that justification.

"The little more, and how much it is," perhaps; but' nbt "tne little less, and what worlds away." Archer did an invaluable work for drama in