FOLDER

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25080, 11 January 1947, Page 3

FOLDER

Literary Views And

Reviews

Desmond MacCarthy recentlv filled out his weekly measure in the “Sunday Times" with some observations on the speaking ol verse, especially by broadcasters: Sometimes while listening to reciters on the air we can t help suspecting that their voices sound differently in their own ears—and sweeter. Otherwise they would not swoop about so confidently. I think the delivery of verse or special prose might be greatly improved if rehearsals were recorded, and played back to readers before their performances. I remember what a shock it was when I first heard myself. I did not dislike the man who was speaking, but he did not seem to bear any resemblance to myself; and I realised that certain desirable effects which I nad supposed to be .well within my scope were certainly not within his. We are ap. to take for granted that if we speak with feeling that feeling will find expression in our voices and be transmitted. This is often a mistake. Although emotional response to the content of any passage must precede its delivery yet as experienced actors know, once pace pauses, ana due emphasis have been registered, it can then be spoken as well —and often better— without any emotion accompanying its delivery, save perhaps a detached delight in the verbal felicity of it. for 50 people who can sing a song there are not two who can read a poem aloud. Most poets I have heard reading poems either moo like a cow or mumble like a bee in a foxglove. When the late Canon Rawnsley quesskiving dalesmen about Wordsworth s habits, this was one of the answers he got: "He was not a man as folks could cr ® x ’ nor n °t a man as could crack wi folks. But there was another thing as kep folk off, he had a ter'ble girt deep voice. . . . I’ve knoan folks, village lads and lasses, coming over by the old road, which runs from Grasmere to Ry dal, flayt a’mostto death there by the Wishing Gaate to hear the girt voice a groanin' and mutterin’ and thunderin' of a still evening. And he had a way of standin’ quite still by the rock there in t'path under Rydal, and folks could hear sounds like a wild beast coming from the rocks, and childer were scared fit to be a dead a’most.” Yet Wordsworth when describing those lommunings with his Muse could write, ‘•He murmurs by the running brooks, A music sweeter than their own.” When possessed by poetic emotion men are apt to have no notion what kind of noises they are making. *» Somebody, who had come across a much longer version of the “Treasure Island” song, “Fifteen Men,” was startled by the horrid thought that Stevenson had merely quoted, not composed. the lines in the story. He wrote to the “Sunday Times” in his anxiety, which was soon relieved. An American writer had “completed” the ditty. . . But the inquiry prompted another: ''{“at in ac .t’ was the “dead man’s chest . This produced conflicting (but not irreconcilable) replies:

(i) Sir—My paternal grandparents. Sir Henry Taylor and Alicia Theodosia Spring-Rice, were close friends of Robert Louis Stevenson. My father told me that grandmamma, being puzzled as to the exact meaning of the words “on the dead man’s chest,” asked R.L.S. whether it alluded to the body of the deceased or to a piece of furniture, and that his reply was: “Do you know, Alice, I haven’t the faintest idea!” UNA V. TROUBRIDGE. Chelsea Cloisters, 5.W.3. (ii) Sir, —The evidence, which is irrefragable, of R.L.S.’s authorship (in a letter to Sidney Colvin he wrote: “ ‘Treasure Island’ came out of Kingsley’s ‘At Last,’ where I got the Dead Man’s Chest—and that was the seed”) can be found in Burton E. Stevenson's “Famous Single Poems: and The Controversies which have raged round Them” (Harrap, 1924). Lloyd Osbourne, after corroborating that the four lines were original to R.L.S., continues: “The most confirming fact of all to my mind was that he always considered the Dead Man’s Chest not as a literal chest but as a small rock.” It is one of the Virgin Islands, and according to F. A. Fenger, who photographed it in 1916, it is more of a rock than an island. CHAS. A. MacINTOSH THYNE, Vice-Chairman. R.L.S. Club, Glasgow. * Sir Almroth Wright celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in August. . . . And why is this anniversary of a famous man of science and medical teacher < Alexander Fleming is one of his pupils) recorded in a column of literary notes? Because Sir Almroth is the original from whom Shaw drew Sir Colenso Ridgeon in “The Doctor’s Dilemma.”

CURRENT BOOKS LOVER OF THE HEIGHTS Mountain Holidays. By Janet Adam Smith. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 194 pp. Janet Smith was born in the hills of the island of Arran, where, as one of a family of climbing enthusiasts, and with the advantage of tuition from a famous mountaineer, Professor W. P. Ker, she learnt the rudiments of the art and the discipline it imposes. Her love of the high places shines in her charming book. For the author not only loved the mountains, she also loved reading about them; and out of her studies has sprung an ability to set living scenes before her readers, so that with her they enjoy, in a sense that seems not wholly vicarious, her experiences and her feelings about them. In a sense, too, this book is didactic; for it is full of useful hints, introduced incidentally, on mountain lore and the arts of climbing. It will be good reading for mountaineers anywhere, and New Zealand enthusiasts will welcome it as cordially as any. CHANGING SKIES British Weather. By Stephen Bone. Collins. 48 pp. Mr Bone’s essay on Britain’s climate —“mild, wet, cloudy, windy, and changeable”—4s altogether delightful. His account of its phenomena, comparative and explanatory, makes an admirable introduction to chapters on its influence —as architecture, dress, sport, and horticulture, for example, obey it; as the landscape is coloured and shaped by it; as history has been turned by it; and as the English character and English creation, in constancy and diversity, reflect it. “It is this country with its changing skies and flying cloud shadows that has produced Wordsworth, Constable, and Turner.”

There are two special reasons to be grateful that an artist wrote this book. It owes its best qualities to an artist’s faculty of observing and interpreting; and the illustrations are exceedingly well chosen. LOGICAL POSITIVISM Language, Truth, and Logic. By A. J. Ayer. Gollancz. 160 pp. Mr Ayer’s essay, an exposition of logical positivism, was first printed in 1936; it is now reissued with a long preface, in which he says that, though the questions dealt with now seem less simple than it suggests, he still believes his position to be “substantially correct.” It is, in crude summary. one that rejects metaphysics, and finds the sole task of. the philosopher in clarifying the relations between language and “experience.” Consequently, he must “understand science”; and the barriers between science and philosophy are down, except in the distinction between “the speculative and the logical aspects of science.” of which the latter are the Philosopher’s concern. ENGINE DRIVER Queen Mary of the Iron Road. By Fred C. Bishop. Jarrolds. 150 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Fred Bishop drove the Royal Scot find the Coronation Scot, the most famous named trains in England, and he and his fireman. Carswell, took the Coronation Scot to the United States, m World’s Fair year. He had completed telling his life-story to Mr M. C. D. Wilson and Mr A. S. L. Robinson. shortly before he died; and here JJ is. a story of surprisingly wide and deep interest—if the reader has any real curiosity about railways and their running and the inside view of it—find a first-class self-portrait, drawn ■without thought of self-portraiture, find most likeabje. The photographs . book correspond beautifully,