LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21578, 14 September 1935, Page 19

LITERARY GOSSIP

A plea for the "old-fashioned* novel was advanced by Mr Hugh Walpole, when guest of honour of the Book Society at a dinner at the May Fair Hotel. "Many young novelists," he said, -have the idea that unless a new form for the novel can be found, the novel is doomed. I am sure that they are being led in the wrong direction. To create human beings and make his reader believe in them is the whole business of the novelist." ~ .„ ■» He referred to the 'tuppenny™ bookshops, which had been opened all over the country. They were, he said, in perpetual use and formed a phenomenon of which the booksellers and publishers were not taking enough account. -The »«« Society was well justified and tne committee had never had any of their choices challenged. He thought that every author of every school of real importance was represented >in the choices. There was a new situation in letters which could be helped by publishers and booksellers achieving some kind of plan which, as yet, they had not achieved. What was wrong with literature was that the intellectual aesthetic critic and the common man were so widely separated. Owing to a Hollywood engagement, Mr Walpole is raSgalag** chairmanship of the Book Cpmhe has held since the formation of the Society. Professor G. S. Gordon, President rf Magdalen College, asked Mr Walpoli to accept a symbolic scroll and a Venetian picture by Sickert. A letter in the "Observer": T. Foe on "Hie Crossword WnO." Sir,-As one of those addicts for whose fedtogeyai the kindest non-crosswording friends have Sdy a charitable tolerance-for Sufis' is the badge of aU our ttibet w for soace in your columns for I noteWe defence by anticipation jo* what o£ critics call The crossword or so ago, Edgar Allan Poe introduced to seiisaiional fiction M/II Auguste Dupin, the literary ptogSiitor of a long Une of subtle amateur detectives, toaluding our Sherlock Holmes himself. M. Dupins |? s t recorded exploit, tne solu«on_of the mysterious murders in the Sue Morffueis prefaced by a discourse oil toe ddignts of intellertual ;and Ssychic analysis. This extract from It is so apt (save for ifa, final compliment) to the poor cas? that it might have been inspired by a prophetic sense of his need of a champion:

As the strong man exults in bis physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst to that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupatwM.. lirtaatoj his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics exhibiting in bis solution Sfeach a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension prater-naturaL - YOUIS - et<V ERNEST CARB. Lyndall, Forest Drive, Kingswood, Surrey. From a midsummer musing on "Fountains" by Ivor Brown: In hot weather the very noise of the word "fountain" has a cool suggestion. It tinkles balm in midsumnier; it tosses a fine spray. The loveliest of English abbeys is called Fountains, and it could have no lovelier name, a name whose spell is carried westward oyer the Pennines to Fountain's Fell, which still musically speaks of. the Abbots old dominion.. The spring of water? to a first necessity of human existence, and the word fountain /so came to be a synonym for life itself; m the Bible the fountain is the heart, and Shakespeare had the same feeling for the word: — The spring, the heart, the fountain of your blood Is stopp'd, cried Macbeth, his dark deed over. To the rhymester the fountain is a convenience, if mountain has preceded it on paper; to the poet; it is a blessing apart from suitability of sound. For it is one of those words which can raise a a }£&*** power; naturally the idea of thrusting streams has always been symbolic of poetry itself. Parnassus could not be Parnassus without Castalian springs.

The autograph draft of Kipling's famous song, "Mandalay," exhibiting the author's varying moods in composition, was sold for £2lO at Sotheby's recently. Mr Gabriel Wells was the purchaser. In 1930 Mr Wells gave £630 for the manuscript of "Recessional," but this price was topped when Mr W. Hill, of Chicago, paid £BOO for the 30 lines of "The White Man's Burden." Big sums for Kipling MSS. really began in 1928, when Dr. Rosenbach paid £SOO for the Ballad of "Ahmed Shah," and when Mr Spencer won . "With Scindia to Delhi," at £550. > Before this—in 1927—the manuscript of "The Ab-sent-Minded Beggar" (November 6, 1899), with Sullivan's music* had reached £340.

The sale at Sotheby's marked the close of the season, and the bidding throughout was brisk and eager. A Third Folio of Shakespeare's Plays, 1664, for example, brought the excellent price, £6OO (Robinson). A copy of "Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities," written by R. S. Surtees, but published anonymously in 1843, with coloured plates by Henry Aiken, was sold to Mr C. F. G. R. Schwerdt, who possesses the finest sporting library known, for £405. It had been sent by the grandson of Surtees, the Hon. Robert Vereker.

The librarian of the Canterbury Public Library reports that there is a steady demand for Mr Somerset Maugham's book on Spanish life, "Don Fernando." Other books attracting attention are the lively autobiography of "Broncho Charlie," the veteran of the Wild West; "Farewell to Fifth Avenue," an entertaining story of modern American life, by Cornelius Vanderbilt, jun.; and that classic of Arabia, "Revolt in the Desert," by T. E. Lawrence. When Superintendent G. W. Cornish was at Scotland Yard he had many famous cases to solve; these he describes in his book, "Cornish of the Yard," which is now in demand. Readers of crime stories are finding pleasure in A. E. W. Mason's clever book, "They Wouldn't be Chessmen," a new Inspector Hanaud story. Another thriller at present in demand is "Death in the Clouds," b. Agatha Christie, who reintroduces the clever Hercule Poirot. The two humorous stories by Victor Canning, "Mr Finchley Discovers Hi* England" and "Polycarp's Progress," are being widely read. "The Stm Look Down," by Dr. A. J. Cronin, and "The Curtain Rises," by Hilda Vaughan, are becoming increasingly popular.