ALL MANNER OF MEN

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22593, 24 December 1938, Page 20

ALL MANNER OF MEN

An Irish Rebel A Servant of the Queen: Maud Gonne Macbride’s Autobiography. Gollancz. 350 pp. (10/6 net.)

The Queen who was served was not Queen Victoria. Far from it. Maud Gonne would have gone to any pains to annoy or belittle her rightful sovereign. The Queen to be adored was a “tall, beautiful woman with dark hair blown on the wind— Cathleen ni Houlihan,” the guardian spirit of Ireland, for whom Miss Gonne felt glad to be “one of the little stones on which her feet rested on her way to Freedom.” Maud Gonne’s story is hard to believe, but not incredible. She is herself so wayward, self-centred, and prejudiced that she makes her own difficulties. Such a tale, more calmly told and showing some signs of tolerance, would be less astounding. The bare bones of her life story are strange enough. The daughter of an English colonel, she was impelled by ancestry, residence in Ireland, and a naturally wild and romantic disposition to join in the battle for Irish freedom. Her life for more than 30 years, from 1890 onwards, was spent in a whirl of spies, plots, farce, great men of letters, hurried journeys, speeches, and self-gratifi-cation. Excitement was the breath of life to her and she took very deep breaths. Adoration, flattery, and envy kindled her spirits: “They are saying you are a woman of the Sidhe

who rode into Donegal on a white horse surrounded by birds to bring victory.” No enterprise was too great or too small for this energetic, confident spirit. She would with assurance enter upon transactions to break treaty bonds between great Powers; and she would toil and conspire to organise a small procession. What, she did for Ireland was beyond an ordinary woman’s power. Her chief work was to draw the attention of the world to evictions, to prevent them herself, or to make good their evil effects, to tour Europe and America raising money for the cause of Irish freedom. Her enthusiasm and courage were unusual, but both had their foolish excesses. Her zeal and self-sufficiency made her enjoy humour that made others suffer, and her courage led her and others into rashness. “A Servant of the Queen” is quite frank; it tells much that is new about Arthur Griffith, Tim Healy, the Redmonds, and other Irish champions, and it describes, with unintentional humour, the rivalries that led to the establishment of the Abbey’ Theatre. George Russell and W. B. Yeats do not gain prestige in this story; but it will be a dull reader who will not soon learn to distrust Maud Gonne’s opinions. Her stories and reports are sufficiently entertaining and informative.

Not many men are commemorated in a word. American slang has given such homnir, in the adjective “Ritzy,” to the man who taught the world new standards of luxury, comfort, organisation,* and efficiency in hotel service. “Host to the world,” indeed, is not too extravagant a sub-title for the biography of Cesar Ritz (George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. 327 pp. 12/6 net.), by his wife, Marie Louise Ritz. This obscure Swiss had a prodigious, though specialised, talent that turned obscurity to fame. It can be seen at work in his earliest days, as a waiter in Paris; it can be seen in his unerring selection of that archbishop of cooks, Escoffier; it can be seen in his reproach to Branchini, the reception clerk, who, turning out at 6 in the morning to receive early guests, was obliged to dress in a plain, loose business coat, his regulation morning-coat not being yet returned from brushing. By ill luck he met Ritz in the lobby. Ritz raised his hands in despair: “Ou sommes nous descendus!” And the proof of this extraordinary man’s eminence, perhaps, appears in this, that Edward VII would say to him, “Arrange me a dinner. You know better than I do what I like.” Mmo. Ritz’s book describes a personality, a career, an achievement; also, a period and its procession of great and gilded ones.

This is an interesting dedication: “To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells (formerly the Dean of Rochester) in memory of a cold night in Tarancon”—interesting and curious. It is the dedication of Mr Herbert Greene’s Secret Agent in Spam (Robert Hale Ltd. 286 pp. 12/6 net.), and its explanation appears in one of Mr Greene’s adventures, when he was helped on his way from Valencia to Madrid by a ride in the Dean’s car. Mr Greene was commissioned, for secret service in Republican Spain by a mysterious Mr Y. in London. His descriptions of besieged Madrid, of Barcelona under air attack and bombardment from the sea, and (at second hand) of a battle between the International Brigade and Franco’s men are vivid and moving. The details of his secret service work, which was perilous enough, are exciting and amusing, though it does not seem that he achieved or learned much that was of great importance. One result of it was that he became a supporter of the Republican cause; and the most impressive evidence in the book is that which reveals the strength of purpose and the cheerful spirit and the intelligent organisation that prevail behind the Republican front.— Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

The South African goldfields and those of British. Columbia, Klondyke and the Yukon, and Nome—these have been the scenes where Mr E. C. Trelawney-Ansell has spent the life of hazard and adventure recorded in I Followed Gold (Peter Davies. 320 pp. 8/6 net.). Red gold, red blood: these are the colours of a story which ranges between wild comedy and high melodrama. For high comedy, for example, take the arrival of the first barmaid in Jo’burg: “Cheer after cheer went up as she was carried shoulder high from the coach, to the billiard room of the central hotel. . . .” And so on, and indeed very far on. For high melodrama, take the death and last words of the Zulu who, saving Ansell from a buffalo, was gored and disembowelled: “You have been a good Baas. Bury my spears with me, I do not want to be defenceless where I go.” Many eyes will start as they read here of the fabulous wealth and fabulous extravagance and riot of the American fields. The Berry brothers, for instance, cleared a million dollars at Dawson, sold out, made millions more at Kern river, and went on their triumphant way to triumph again in Texas. These men never “came to town” without its costing them 2000 dollars a night. There is something prodigious about the deeds and men in this book; and Mr Trelawney-Ansell stands up to his history and his company grandly.

Three new volumes now apoear m the Aldine Library, published by J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. at 4/6 net. Two are autobiographies, of great but diverse interest. One is that of the veteran of the old-time travelling circus, “Lord” George Sanger: Seventy Years a Showman is a delightful book, which, since its first publication in 1910, when Sanger was half-way through the eighties, has gained rather than lost in interest, as the England which he roved and knew has receded. The other autobiography is a schoolboy’s; Douglas Pope’s Now I’m Sixteen was the “surprise” book of 1937, surprising not only because a mere boy had written it but because it was so well worth writing and well written. The third book is perhaps the best, as it is the happiest, of Edward Thomas’s, The South, Country. . The scenes and studies of this book belong to Kent and Hampshire, chiefly, but also to Sussex. Surrey. Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Cornwall. This edition has an introduction by Helen Thomas and is illustrated with new woodcuts by Eric Fitch Daglish.