FOLDER

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25046, 30 November 1946, Page 6

FOLDER

A history of the Thackeray family, which has lain hidden for nearly 70 years, has just been acquired by the British Museum from a private collector who picked it up in a bookshop, a special correspondent of the “Observer” reported on November 17. It is “Memorials of the Thackeray Family, 1879,” by Jane Townley Pryme and Alicia Bayne. A single copy reached an American library some years ago, but this is the first time it has appeared in any public library in this country. The book is dedicated to Lady Bitchie, Thackeray’s daughter—“To Anne Isabella/daughter of/William Makepeace Thackeray/whose genius/ has conferred distinction on his family /These Memorials/ are dedicated/By her affectionate kinswomam/Alicia

Bayne.” In addition, each of the 100 numbered copies—which were presented to members of Thackeray’s family—bears the touching admonition: “It is requested ‘as a favour’ that the person to whom this volume is presented/ will take particular care that it does not come—either in their lifetime/or afterwards —into careless and indifferent hands. As so small a number of copies are printed it cannot be replaced.” As a history of the family jt does not magnify Thackeray at the expense of the rest of his family: the novelist occupies only 85 of the book’s 500 pages. For biographers and students the gain will more than offset this shortcoming. The volume fills a noticeable gap in the British Museum’s Thackerayana, and the book is now available for public study for the first time.

Throughout the writings of Katherine Mansfield there are numerous references to Maata, the “Maori Princess.” with whom she went to school in Wellington. The Mansfield Biography, compiled by Miss Ruth Mantz, refers to an incomplete and unpublished novel entitled “Maata.” It appears that Maata is still living in New Zealand and claims to be in possession of the MS. of the unfinished novel. The story of Maata and her relation to Katherine Mansfield has now been told in “The Mystery of Maata,” by P. A. Lawlor, to be published early next month with an introduction by Dr. G. H. Scholefield.

“A problem that confronts every serious publisher,” says Sir Stanley Unwin in the new (fourth, revised) edition of his book. “The Truth About Publishing.” “is what to do with the many first-rate and learned books which cry aloud for publication, but which it is certain will have an insufficient sale to pay their way. In ©lden days, nearly all the better firms of publishers considered themselves under an obligation to issue such books so far as their means justified them in so doing. It was often possible for them to do much in this way to foster learning, because if any of their more popular books were particularly successful the bulk of the profits came their way. To-day, with sliding-scale royalties, the author reaps the fruits of any exceptional success. This is quite as it should be, but 'it sets a very definite limit upon what even the most public-spirited publisher can do in the way of financing unprofitable undertakings.”

From an address by Sir Richard Livingstone, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, who -takes his stand with Newman, among others, in valuing the now rare practice of learning great poetry—or prose—by heart

Bernard Shaw, in his latest book, said that this is an age in which everybody knows the XYZ of everything and the ABC of nothing. There are three subjects about which people ought to know something. One is science, or rather the impact of science on civilisation, and its immense power; the second is religion, and the third philosophy. At the moment, we are living in a world which, politically, was a little too dominated by the idea of equality. That is only natural after the very unequal state of things from which we are beginning to emerge. But it might be better if more attention were paid to quality. At the moment, not enough trouble is always taken to see that the first-rate is present as a vitamin in education. A part of education should be to learn something great by heart. It may come alive long afterwards. Like Sir Richard Livingstone, Cardinal Newman thought less of present advantage than of future revelation. This is the passage referred to—from Bis “Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent.” Let us consider how differently young and old are affected by some classic author, such as Homer or Horace. Passages which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplaces, neither better nor worse than a hundred others which any clever writer might supply, which he gets by heart and thinks very fine, and imi-. fates, as he thinks, successfully, in his own flowing versification, at

length come home to him, when long years have passed, and he ha§ had experience of life, and pierce him as if he had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an lonian festival, or among the Sabine hills, have lasted generation after generation for thousands of years, with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the current literature of his own day, with all its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival.

Readers of the Brontes will not think it too late to recall a centenary that fell in May—that of the ’little book of poems in which the sisters hid their indentity under the names of Currer Ellis, and Acton Bell.

The story is well known, said the “Manchester Guardian,” of how Charlotte accidentally found Emily’s poems, which, as she discerningly said, "were not at all like the poetry women generally write . . and had a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating.” It was long before Emily was reconciled even to the discovery. When the book was published, and they had to pay for that; only two copies were solcL in the first year. “Our book is found to be a drug; no man needs it or heeds it,” wrote Charlotte. Indeed, the verses are not remarkable save that they include some of Emily’s flights of genius, among them the lines: “He comes with western winds with evening’s wandering airs. With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise and change, that kill me with desire.” But the publishing of this book seemed to open the way to other projects, and in the winter of 1847 all three sisters saw their novels published—“ Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights,” and “Agnes Grey.” Lasting fame was won by two of those novels, books written in the quiet parsonage house which Charlotte once called “the torpid retirement where we live like dormice.” Strange dormice these! But it is indeed true that the passion and imagination of their minds flowered the more strongly for their loneliness in that out-of-the-way village among the Yorkshire moots.