BOOKS and AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 284, 26 August 1922, Page 16

BOOKS and AUTHORS.

By

LIBER.

Give a man a pipe he can smoke, Give a man a book he can read: And his home is bright with a calm delight Though the room be poor indeed. —JAMES THOMSON.

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Tho Crown Prince’s Memoirs. “The Memoirs of tho Crown Prince of Germany” (Thornton Butterworth; per Dymock and Co., Sydney), is an interesting, if not very reliable addition to the already stupendous mass of literature on the Great War. It is more than doubtful whether it will be of any great service to its author as propaganda in favour of a restoration, in the author’s person, of the Hohenzollern rule, and it is equally questionable whether it will be accepted as any convincing defence of the part played by the Crown Prince in German State affairs, both prior to and during the war period. The author styles it “a candid chronicle” and a “personal confession,” a book in which he unfolds his “life-story from boyhood to exile-” As to tho alleged candour of the narrative, it would bo interesting to have the opinion of the author’s father, and it is to be feared that as “a life-story” it is remarkable as much for what it omits as for what it reveals. The German point of view on matters of taste is, so we all know full well by this time, very different from that of the average Englishman. That an English princo could ever reveal and discuss his own father’s mistakes and failings with such extraordinary frankness as that which the Crown

Prince here displays when writing of the Kaiser, is quite inconceivable. In his anxiety to prove that he, and he alone, saw how the war was going, that he knew more of military strategy than men who had made a life-study of the art, the Crown Prince is constantly belittling his father’s abilities as a ruler, and the capacity of his leading statesmen and generals. At the same time, it must be admitted that if he actually wrote this book himself —there are persistent rumours of his having had a “ghost”—he is possessed of high literary gifts. The reader of these “Memoirs” will not have proceeded very far before he is forced to the conclusion that the author cares very little for accuracy. In his anxiety to make the best of a bad case, to bolster up the stale old mendacity that Germany was forced into the war, ho puts forward statements which can only be characterised as grotesquely false. For years before the war Germany was steadily increasing her naval and military armameats, and yet the Crown Prince has the audacity to write of “the feverish and unconcealed warlike preparations of the Allies.” He blames England for “launching ship after ship,’.’ but very conveniently forgets that it was lii>, hero, Tirpitz, who forced further naval preparation upon England, and that Berlin contemptuously turned down each and every British proposal for a suspension of warship building. Ho has, too. the colossal impudence to write of “the German destiny being bound to the policy of the Vienna Ballplatz to the extent of vassalage’ — this apropos of the Austrian message to Serbia—whereas there is an overwhelming mass of documentary evidence to prove that the Kaiser and the German war party practically dictated Austria’s refusal to accept Serbia’s explanations, and were really responsible for the ultimatum sent by Vienna to Belgrade. Had the Ciown Prince remembered—or not chosen to forget—-his own father’s notes on the German dispatches, notes which openly state the ex-Kaiser’s determination to humiliate Serbia, he could not have written as he has,done here. The Crown Prince does not hesitate to own that his father “never viewed King Edward without all sorts ot prejudices,” and, even goes so far as to admit that the Kaiser felt that “his somewhat loud and theatrical, rather than genuine manner often struck idly upon the ears of King. Edward.”' In Germany the latter was regarded as the Fatherland s deadly enemy, who wished to “encircle” and destroy her. The Crown Prince, on the contrary, saw in him. “the serene, world-experienced man, and the most successful monarch in Europe for many a long day.”- The genial old gentleman who “reclined in a big easy chair; smoking enormous cigars, gave his grand-nephew some good advice, which, says the Grown Prince, “doubtless had its share in forming my views of the Kaiser’s maxims of government, and in my feeiing. a strong inclination for the constitutional system in operation in England.” . It is a pity that the Crown Prince did not carry his professed sympathy with English constitutionalism into actual practice. On the contrary, it is made quit© clear in this book tha.t his own personal preferences were always for those German statesmen who were thorough-going in their Junker ideas. He never tires, for instance, of sneering at Bethmann-Hollweg. Ho writes at great length of the part he played in the attacks upon Verdun. All the generals were wrong and he was right—that is about the gist of the whole chapter. Ah to the charge brought against him by certain German newspapers of having displayed' grosr, heartlessness with regard to the awful slaughter of ( the German soldiery at Verdun it must be admitted that the Crown

Prince’s reply is frank, manly, and carries with it a ring of honesty and truth. Sad and soi'e at heart as he might be, it was his duty to keep up a cheerful face, and he claims, no doubt with perfect truth, that the men ■ entrusted. to him, who bore the brunt of things, completely understood and appreciated 'his attitude. He will not have it that the Fifth Army was ever beaten, and it is only fair to admit that his last proclamation to his old comrades, written just before he left for HoDjad and exile, is conceived in a fine spirit and eloquently worded.

“The Great Collapse” and “Scenes at Spa” are the headings of chapters which specially invite quotations. Hets is an extract descriptive of the dramatic, nay, even tragic, scene when a message was received from Prince Max of Baden that civil war was unavoidable unless tho Kaiser abdicated.

He stood there as though he had been suddenly halr.ed with his generals in the midst of a nervous pacii»g up and down. He was passionately excited, and addressed himself to those near him with violently expressive gestures. His eyes were upon General Groner and His Ex cellency von Hintze; but a glance was cast now and then at the Field-Marshal General (Hindenburg), who, with his gaze fixed on the distance nodded silently, and an occasional look was also turned towards the white-haired General von Plessen. Somewhat aloof from the group stood General von MarschaH, tho Legation Counsellor von Grunau and Major von Hirschfei'd. As I stood opposite to my father I saw clearly how distraught were his features—how his excited and sallow face twitched and trembled.

Later in tide same chapter the Prince declares that “the High Command were forced to sign the ignominious armistice, not because we were defenceless, but because the field army could not continue the campaign with the revolution in the rear.” Although his book shows that he holds his father responsible for certain mistakes, ho enters a finely-worcled plea for justice to the Kaiser:

The entire blame for our misfortune our people have heaped upon their old Kaiser. As his son, but also as one who was never his blind admirer, I must demand justice in any verdict pronounced upon my father. . . . Like everybody else, my father was, aftjr all, only human, and he. too. was worn out. Did not stronger men also experience their hours of weakness in the war P... I ask. on the Kaiser's account, that people should exorcise humanity in deliberation and righteousness in Judgment. I hone to meet with understanding for my father among those nationally disposed Germans who have the honest courage to look back and to beat their own breasts: "He that is without sin. . . I”

The concluding passages of the book convey a message to tho German people that the Prince will always be ready to answer any summons they may give him to play a useful part in the rebuilding of the nation. The book contains a number of interesting illustrations.

LIBER’S NOTE BOOK Stray Leaves:. E.G., Wellington, writes, apropos of my note last week on E. M. Forster’s novel: I “Some years ago 'The Celestial Omnibus,' by E. M. Forster, fascinated me. Ever since I have tried to got other books by the same au- ‘ thor, but without success. Other books of his specially interested me With thanks for your many good suggestions and much enlightenment. —E.G.” Most of the E. M. Forster books are, lam afraid, now out of print. “Howard’s End,” however, was reprinted last year. Any bookseller advertising in *Thb Dominion could procure a copy. The many New Zealand subscribers to that excellent publication “Art in Australia,” will join me in congratulating the publishers upon their decision to issue future numbers of the magazine in the old size, although the iiuw and reduced price will not be increased. The next issue promises to be of exceptional interest, judging by tho preliminary list of contents of which I have received a copy. An addition to the five series of monographs on Australian artists which was commenced by the Hilder Book is shortly to bo made in “The Art of Elioth Gruner.” There will be twenty plates in colour and thirty-two in black and white, including an etched portrait of the artist by Norman Lindsay. Gruner, by the way, is a New Zealander by birth, hailing from Dannevirke. He ij now one of Australia’s leading artists, and his work is eagerly sought alter by collectors. The Gruner Book will be issued by “Art in Australia.”

I have to thank Mr. David Milligan for an interesting excerpt from tho New York “Times” of June -4, being a summary of a most amusing article, by a Canadian Judge, His Honour Mr. Justice Riddell, of the Supreme Court of Ontario, which has recently appeared in the American Bar Association Journal. Judge Riddell examines the report of the Bardell y. Pickwick case, as given in “The Pickwick Papers,” expressing some very original and cer- * tainly very amusing opinions as to the conduct of the case by the lawyers for both sides. As a good Pickwickian, I

grieve to say that he declares (probably with his tongue in his cheek) that Mr. Pickwick was quite rightfully condemned to pay damages to Mrs. Bardell, and that “the infamy attached to Dodson and Fogg, Sepgeant Buzfuz, and Mrs. Bardell flows entirely from unfair statements of interested parties,” It is a clever and most amusing skit which I add with pleasure to my collection of Dickensiana. Miss Rebecca West, whose “The Return of the Soldier” was a much-dis-cussed first novel, has written a now

and much longer story, “The Judge.” Hutchinsons will publish tho book. In Mrs. M. A. Stirling’s new book on the late William de Morgan and his wife the old story is retold of the difficulty Do Morgan had to find a publisher for his first novel, “Joseph Vance.” When finally it was accepted by Mr. Heinemann it was only upon the urgent entreaties of his reader, Mr. W. Lawrence, that the publisher would consent to read it. At first when Mr. Heinemann was shown the typescript its length, fairly affrighted the publisher. “I’m d——d if I’ll read it,” he said. Eventually, however, his reader induced him to do so, with the result that the publisher was soon on the Atlantic with proofs for the American market. Even then De Morgan, at Mr. Lawrence’s suggestion, had cut out between 30,000 and 40,000 words. Death overtook the author, one of the gentlest and most lovable of men, in a very strange way. He had designed a new aeroplane, and was visited by an Air officer from the front, with whom ho had a half-hour’s interview in his study. The stranger left. Three days later William De Morgan was in the delirium of trench fever, and he died in the belief that he was a wounded soldier in a hospital in France. He had once remarked, “Things seldom happen to me quite as they happen to other folk.” . T. W. Crosland, who wrote “The Unspeakable Scot,” has written a satire on the medical profession, which Werner Laurie and Co- will publish under the title, “A Looking-Glass for Harley Street: Or How To Be Happy Though Ill.” Mr. John Lane announces a new and cheaper edition of Anatole France’s works, the-first volume of which will be “The Gods Are Athirst.” As this new issue is admittedly an experiment, I am rather surprised the publisher did not begin with one of tho French writer’s more popular 'stories, flay, “The Crime of Silvestro Bonnard-”

Mr. T. Fisher Unwin has published a new book by Mr. Samuel Turner, the well-known mountain climber. Tho title is “The Conquest of the New Zealand Alps” (English price, a guinea). 1 It is a far cry back to tho days when the lady who writes as ‘‘Richard Dehan” made her first hit with “Tho Dop Doctor.” A hew story by “Richard Dehan,” “The Just Steward,” is to be published very shortly by Heinemanns. The tale is said to blond ancient and modern times, tho scene being laid first in the Egypt of tho Pharaohs, and then in tho Europe of to-day. Someone has unearthed a juvenile literary production of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, a play entitled “Monmouth,” written when R-L.S. was in his early teens. And now two of Stevenson’s oldest friends, Mr. Edmund Gosse and Sir Sidney Colvin, have, I see, expressed a hope that “Monmouth” will be left unpublished. Sir Sidney Colvin says, in a letter to “The Times',” of June 22: “As a genera] rule, I hdld it to be unjust to an author that work which he thought proper to keep to himself should be given to the world ' after Ills death.” Sir Sidney expresses regret that the new "Vailima” edition is to include two volumes of what would appear to be mere discarded drafts and experiments.”. . . “In the case of an artist so scrupulous as was Stevenson’ as to style and finish, I hold such publication to be especially ill-judged.” Some interesting letters written to Leigh Hunt by Charles Lamb, Carlyle, and others, were recently sold at Sothebv’s. In a letter referring to the writing of his “Frederick the Great,” Carlyle tells Hunt that “to rummage one hundred wagon loads of contemptible marine stores and weld out of them a malleable bar of any kind, it is such a job ... as was nevpr laid on me before.” In another letter, referring to Francis Jeffrey, of the “Edinburgh Review,” “The Sage of Chelsea” wrote: “He that was Francis, and is now My Lord—-somewhat of the Francis, having oozed out (I fear) In the interim.” .

SOME RECENT FICTION “The House of the Beautiful Hope.” “The House of the Beautiful Hope,” by Robert Stuart Christie (Cecil Palmer, per Whitcombs and Tombs), is in many ways a very original and interesting’first novel. It suffers from undue length and from a certain flamboyance in style, but it is a story which displays a fine imaginative gift and a capacity to present with fitting power several highly dramatic (situations. The chief characters are a young artist, Michael Ridley, a man of noble artistic ideals, ideals which are far from being shared by his cold apd selfish wife, and a young woman, Pepita, who Is of mixed English and. Portuguese parentage, and who lives in a mysteryhaunted' old house in a little village near Lisbon. . The artist, who goes to Portugal in search alike of relief

from what has become his well-nigh intolerable domestic life and of a new field for his art, meets with an accident which deprives him of his memory. Ho enters into a companionship with I’epita, who is foully ill-treated by a villainous Portuguese guardian, and this opens up for him an entirely new life. The situation which arises is handled by the author with commendable delicacy and discretion, and many readers of the story will regret that it should close in tragedy so far as tho warmhearted and sadly-tried I’epita is concerned. The story possesses several well drawn minor characters, and. although not free from a suspicion of too■ deliberately ‘fine writing,” is for a first novel an effort of decided promise. Stories by "Lucas Malet.”

Under the title “Da Silva’s Widow and Other Stories” (Hutchinson and Co,, per Ferguson and Osborne), the well-known writer, Lucas Malet, otherwise Mrs. Harrison, who, by the way, is a daughter of that distinguished Victorian, the late Charles Kingsley, gives us nine excellent ‘.‘novels in little,” each and all of which well sustain the high reputation of the author of “Sir Richard Calmady.” The title story, the scene of which is laid at St. Augustin, on the Riviera, describes the disillusioning of a- young Englishman, recently. left a widower, who receives a curious-ly-worded letter of condolence from a school friend of his late wife. Ho goes to St. Augustin to visit an old chum who is dying of consumption, and there meets his lady correspondent, a still young and very charming, if somewhat mysterious, woman, with whom he gradually falls in love. She is in the habit of referring, rather enigmatically, to certain “devil-angel” people, of whom she speaks in terms of alternate affection and loathing.. The pair are on the eve of marriage when the poor lady’s secret is revealed by the arrival ofi her Brazilian, half-negro father and mother-in-law, accompanied by her own two children; unmistakably of mixed negro blood, lhe shock to the lover is severe, but the woman recognises, as well as ho doos, that all is over between them. Some of the other stories have a strongly dramatic, even tragic,, interest—-m two of thgm the theme is tho murder of a brutal or vicious husband by a muchtried wife—but all are possessed of a fine literary quality not often to be encountered in latter-day fiction.

Shorter Notices. “Snowdrift, a Story of the Land of the Strong Cold,” by James B. Hendryx (Putnam’s Sens, per Dymock and Co., Sydney), deals with life at Klondyko and on tho Alaskan fields generally, in the earlier days of the great rush northwards. The leading figures are a young mining engineer Carter Brent, who comes of an old Southern family, and an orphan girl, called “Snowdrift,” who, the daughter of a Scots-Canadian trapper and a French-Canadian mother, is befriended after her father’s death in the wilds by an Indian woman. Brent is both a gambler and a drunkard when he meets the heroine, who, despite her lover s sadly too frequent relapses, never loses heart. The villain of the story a sly grog-seller, keeper of gambling houses —-and even worse places—smacks a little of “movie” melodrama, but the story has a fine swing with it through°U“The Gland Stealers/’ by. Bertram Gayton (Herbert Jenkins), is a very absurd, but amusing, story, in which are described the extraordinary results of a “gland grafting” operation which is performed upon an old gentleman of .nineiy-five who resides withes ,gr,Mason in a London suburb. The gland which “does the trick” for the interesting ancient, has been taken from a gorilla-, and when temporarily rejuvenated, the old gentleman depart? upon a gorilla hunting expedition to West Africa, taking with him a number of other ancients. There are some thrilling adventures with the gorillas, whilst the old gentlemen provide some riotous farce—for not enough glands are secured to go round. Mr. Gayton provides some excellent fooling for a while, but the story tails off not a little towards the end. Those of my readers who prefer character drawing to incident, and who can appreciate a restful story, in which nothing very exciting is recorded, but which is nevertheless quietly entertaining, should turn to the pages of Mr. Charles Marriott’s latest novel- “An Order to View” (Hutchinson and Co., per Ferguson and Osborne). The plot centres round the results of a visit paid to an old manor house in the West of England by a young architect who is engaged to the daughter of a wealthy merchant prince of Barstow (as clearly Bristol as the Cleeve of the 'story is Clifton), and who irfeets at “Moorend” a young lady whose brother is an organist and clever composer. The lives of four very pleasant young people are permanently affected by James Wedmore’s visit, for in the. long run the architect’s fiancee jilts him to elope with the musician and Wedmore is left free to marry the musician’s sister. Read in the right mood this is a very charming story.

W. H. Hudson’s “Afoot in England,” just jublished in London, sounds promising. It was Hudson who wrote those delightful stories. “Green Mansions” and “The Purple Land,” pictures of life in Paraguay, also ‘‘A Naturalist in La P'ata.” He lives in England nowadays.