BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 136, 5 March 1927, Page 27

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

(By

"LIBER.”)

Give a man a pipe he can smoTce, 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 Arthur Christopher season. The eldest brother of the clever Benson family, son of the late Archbishop Benson, brother of E. F. Benson, who wrote “Dodo,” of the actormanager, Sir Frank Benson, and of the Rev. Hugh Benson, and himself a popular novelist, and a yet more popular essayist, Mr. A. C. Benson, selections from whose “Diary” (Hutchinson and Company; per Ferguson and Osborne) have been edited by Mr. I’ercy Lubbock, was for some years assistant-master at Eton, and later on fellow and eventually -Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Practically all his life Benson kept a diary .which ran, so his editor tells us, into forty substantial volumes, or something like four million words. From the “Diary” Mr. Lubbock lias selected a great variety of entries, from which can be gathered niany facts concerning Mr. Benson liimself, his fits of nervous depression, his literary ambitions, social tastes, his criticisms upon his contemporaries, and so forth. It is clear that much of the serenity and, shall I say, quiet self-complacency, which can be perceived in “From a College Window,” “The Upton Letters,” and others of his books of essays, was curiously absent in Benson himself. He himself alludes in his “Diary” to a family trait—“we have all a touch of something morbid and not quite controlled.” His own sister Maggie’s mental collapse proved that, but what he found in himself lie never allowed to .creep into his'books. The “Diary” is full of good things, stories and sketches, tiie author’s career as a pedagogue, college don, and university official. He met many great people, poets, such as Swinburne; novelists, as Henry James; statesmen, as Balfour; academic celebrities, such as Butler, Master of Trinity; and of these and so manv others he has many excellent stories to relate. He seems to have earned very large sums by his pen—his income from authorship lie speaks of as" totalling over £3OOO in one year —and his emoluments from other sources must at one time have been very considerable. But himself a bachelor —he tells us he was never lucky enough to meet the right partner—he devoted large sums out of his personal income to the beautification oMiis college: he was singularly unselfish. The pictures Of famous places and persons in the “Diary” are all very gracefully done. There is an occasional frankness, as when be writes of a great Roval and military personage, the old Duke of Cambridge, as having a “face like a damaged double strawberry, looking verv"infirm,” and he can be outspoken enough concerning many university and other celebrities. But he is nearly always good-tempered, and his literary industry seems to have been something quite extraordinary. The. book is a decided accession to autobiographical literature. Several excellent portraits. (New Zealand price, 325.) Native Diet.

After Miss Effie Rout’s absurdly inaccurate book on so-ca'llcd “Maori Symbolism,” which deservedly aroused so much adverse criticism, her work on “Native Diet” (Win. Heinemann) is decidedly welcome. Miss Rout here conies forward as an enthusiastic advocate of a simple and purely natural vegetable diet such as that which, in the main, was the food of the Maori before the coming of our so-called western civilisation, and which to a large extent, is still that of the native aboriginal race of New Zealand. Mis Rout, examines at length and in useful detail the vegetable diet, the taro, fern root, and cassara, and other natural foods of tlie Maori, discourses upon their fishing and the products of that industry, upon their methods of steaming, preserving and cooking generally, and deals also with the vegetable foods 'and their possibilities for hygienic use of various other native races and by Europeans. Miss Rout, who is clearly a warm advocate of natural and healthy foods, adds greatly to the. interest and utility of her book by setting forth a number of useful recipes. Her work was, it appears from a brief but pregnant preface contributed by the eminent physician. Sir ,William Arbuthnot Lane, written at the request of the New Health Society, of which Sir ■William himself is president; ■ As he says: “It is not suggested that native customs should be adopted in all respects, but rather that we should study the underlying principles of native life, and thus recover much valuable knowledge that might otherwise be lost. The tatooed face of Tomika Te Alutu, here stvled a chief of the House of Arawa, and an alleged “noted authority on cultivation, the last of a long line of leg-end-carriers whose minds were stored with the wisdom of the ages,” is given as a frontispiece to an interesting volume. (New Zealand price Bs.) An Ancient by a Modern. Tn his study of the great Grecian orator who strove so hard to arouse his countrymen to the danger of foreign invasion, “Demosthenes” (Hodder and Stoughton), AL Geoiges Clemenceau, whose superb patriotism has meant so much to lattcrday France, has attempted no detailed biography. Rather has he chosen in his monograph, well translated, by the way, by Mr. Milner Thompson, to use Grecian history and the character of Demosthenes as providing salutary lessons for 'his own countrymen. To Clemenceau the struggle between Philip and Demosthenes was a struggle for the expression of the wider, better spirit of the nation. He does not underrate Greek devotion to culture and regard for the arts, but for a nation to rise and to maintain and strengthen that advance there must be something far more than mere intellectual and artistic effort and attainment. The nation must be imbued by a truly national spirit, and, too, must, as well as serving tlie Fatherland on the fields of battle, “show itself capable of holding methodically—even sometimes against its inclination—to a discipline of peace made of constraints, whether spontaneous or imposed, for the sake of a social development beneficial to all and to each—in other words, a social organisation that will work with a view to a progress proportionate to the average value of tlie contributions of the individuals who compose it.” Clearly this book of AL Clemenceau's carries with it lessons which neither Great Britain nor New Zealand can afford to disregard. AL Clemenceau has studied a man of the past that lie may enlighten men of the present time. (N.Z. price, 13s. Gd.) The Travellers’ Library.

Quite a number of new titles have been added to Air. Jonathan Cape’s admirable series, “The Travellers’ Library” to the excellent typography and singularly neat and most artistic form nt of which I have already drawn the attention of New Zealand book lovers. Here are books of real literary value which, by reason of their eminently avreeable’ appearance, would make quite

a brave show on tlie shelves of the most fastidious bookman. To Mr. Percy Lubbock's "Earlham,” and “The Craft for Fiction” have now been added the same author’s delightful “Roman Pictures,” a copy of the first edition of which by the way, Liber bought at an English and American book-shop in tiie Piazza del Spagna itself one terrifically hot afternoon last August. There is a distinct flavour of Henry Janies about Mr. Lubbock’s Roman book, but its author has his own point of view on most things and his ‘Roman Pictures,” a fine accompaniment by the way, of Mr. Lucas’s “Wanderer in Rome,” shall always be a treasured possession of mine.

Here, too, is Samuel Butler’s “Erewhon”—Mr. Jonathan Cape has all the Butler copyright books in his list—that much discussed Butler item, “The Way of all Flesh,” is bv its side. I rejoice too, to meet again an old friend or mine, Mr. Ernest Bramah’s “Wallet of Kai Lung,” so long unprocurable in reasonably cheap form, and those who enjoy Mr. Arthur Machen’s whimsically humorous fancy, will be pleased to see it represented 'in this series by the essays entitled “Dog and Duck.” Then too, there are those earlier sketches, “Dubliners,” by Mr. James Joyce, over whose “Portrait of the Artis as'a Young Man,’ and much more so, over whose eccentric “Ulysses” there has been so much discussion ; Mr. Laurence Housman’s amusing Victor, ian plays, “Angels and Ministers,” with their portraits of Queen Victoria—and John Brown —“Dizzy,” Gladstone, Parnell, Chamberlain, and others—and two collections, “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me” and “Clarinda Walks in Heaven,” by that highly original writer, Air.. A. F. Cophard, to the first issues of which, in much more expensive form, allusion in detail has already been made in these columns. “The Travellers’ Library,” to which additions will be made from time to time, is . excellent value at their New Zealand price of 4s. Gd. per volume.

For Youthful ReadersMr. Arthur Mee, whose “Children’s Cyclopaedia” is rightly famous, and who lias made so many excellent compilations for youthful readers, is again to the fore with an admirable gift book, “The Children’s Shakespeare” (Hodder and Stoughton). Mr. Mee has wisely discerned the value to children of the English-speaking race of making some early acquaintance with the works of England’s greatest son. Hence his abridgement ahd rearrangement for children, in Shakespeare’s own words, of sonic of the greatest of the dramatic works of the Bard of Avon should be a standard book for tens of thousands of British children. ,The book has a special merit in its astonishing wealth of suitable illustration, a large number of Shakespearian pictures being here beautifully reproduced in photogravure. (New Zealand price, 10s. Gd.)

Thousands of child readers have rejoiced in “The Arabian Nights,” that precious mine of story-telling wealth. Perhaps the first start was made with some English translation of Gatland’s famous version. Later on, when youth was reached, there were the versions of Jonathan Scott and Edward Lane, and, when the adult stage was arrived at, perhaps some study of Bayne, or Burton, or, in these latter days, of the Frenchman, Alardrus. It is just as well to take the “Nights” in small doses at first. A young reader could not better begin than with “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor,” which, retold, and illustrated by some highly effective coloured drawings, suitably Oriental . in stvle, bv Mr. Huhne Beaman,, has just been published by Mr. John Lane (per Whilconibe and Tombs). An excellent gift book this. (New Zealand price, 75.)

It. is doubtful whether a child reader would altogether discern and realise the pleasant irony of some of the verses included in Miss Edith F. B. Macalister’s “Misdeeds of Maria: A Series of Moral Tales in Verse, Intended by Awful Example to Inculcate Virtue and Propriety to the Young and Thoughtless” (Hodder and Stoughton). But the simple lilt of many of the rhymes, and the highly humorous drawings by the author, are suie of youthful welcome and appreciation, and not a few adults also will here find entertainment. (New Zealand price, 65.).

SOME RECENT FICTION An Ohl Friend in a New Garb.

There must be a good many people who have yet to read that slightly oldfashioned, but, to me at least, ever delightful storv, “Miss Esperance and Mr. Wvcherfev,” which, the work of Mrs. Allen Harker, was first published not far off twenty years ago,, but which has gone into so manv editions published by Mr. John Slurray that it is fairlv to be considered a modern class’ic in fiction. Mr. Slurray has just issued a new and charmingly illustrated edition of my old favourite, there being a coloured frontispiece and fortyfive line reproductions of pictures by Miss Sybil Tawse. There is a compelling spirit of truth and tender charm about the character of the dear old maid who is the heroine of the story, and there will be few who will not be touched bv the alluring combination of pathos and comedy which permeates the storv of the “angel aunt” and that fine old gentleman Air. Wycherley, who, with his wards, has appeared in so many of Mrs. Harker's pleasant stories. This is a very charming edition. (N.Z. price, 135.)

“The Exquisite Perdita.” In “The Exquisite Perdita” (Harrap and Co., per Robertson and Alullens), Mrs. Barrington, whose romances, “Glorious Apollo" and “The Divine Lady,” have been so popular, gives us an agreeable melange of history and fiction, her two principal figures being the beautiful lady, Mrs. Alary, “Perdita” Robinson, who was one of the all too many cheres amies of the Prince Regent, and that person himself the so-called First Gentleman in Europe, whom Thackeray bluntly styled “Europe’s First Blackguard.” Airs. Barrington lias gone to Wraxall’s and many memoirs of the period, also to even more accurate sources for much of her material. Alary Robinson, the “Perdita” of the story, had been taught bv Garrick, and had been sponsored by Sheridan. An intimate of Horace Walpole and Charles James Fox, “Perdita” had her romance with the Prince of Wales. She was in many ways a very remarkable woman, perhaps as much sinned against as sinning, and of tlie evolution of her beauty and prestige and final •ruin, the novelist affords a series of effective pictures.

The Alultitude. Air. William Garrett's story “The Alultitude” (Hutchinson and Co., per Ferguson and Osborne) is the romance of a novel which, written by a young author, is practically stolen by an unprincipled man and published as his own work. The real author, a young Scot, searches long and in vain for a father whom he had imagined was secretly befriending him, only, in the end, to discover that the parent was a drunken and unprincipled artist, the money placed to his credit every year coming from kindly but childless relatives. " The story of Alan Fairley’s experiences in London, his relations with the delightful “Browni,” and other young ladies, his literary trials, and his ultimate dual good fortune, are well and, save for two or three incidents, convincingly described.- This is a very pleasant, wholesome novel. The Harvest of War.

The pitiable, often most tragic, results of international love attachments and alliances are. reflected in the twelve stories or sketches collected in “Harvest,” bv Peter Deane (Hodder awl Stoughton), sons ami daughters of one race'falling in love with those of a race

almost sworn, for a time at least, to mutual enmity. For the most part these stories of French youths falling in love with German girls, with daughters of hereditary foes finding their love passion too much for their environment, these tales of the tragedy of war time and its first succeeding year, are terribly pathetic. They are introduced by Sir Philip Gibbs, who says that the author, who was with the armies of occupation, has not written stories which are “fantastic or ingeniously imagined,” but are “penetrating studies of historical truth.” r ‘Peggy Gets the Sack."

“Liber” remembers reading some years ago a particularly dashing and fascinating romance of Spain and Spanish life, “The Bandolero,” by Paul Gwynne. The story is, I believe, out of print, and I know of one reader who would welcome some new and cheaper edition. To-day there comes, from Hutchinson and Co. (per Whitcombe and Tombs) a new storv, this time with its scenes laid in London and Paris, from Mr. Gwynne's pen, with the decidedly jaunty title, "‘Peggy Gets the Sack.” Peggy is a London tea shop waitress, whose often charming irresponsibility is constantly getting her into trouble. A young engineer of means has much more than a mere penchant for her, and although he suffers at times from quite natural, but, as events prove, inevitably mistaken suspicions, in the end this bewildering piece of femininity is safely steered by the young lover to the good haven of matrimony. Compared with the romantic drama of “The Bandolero,” this Peggy story is as the lightest of souffles to, a full-flavoured formal plot. But with its pleasant touch of the lightest of light comedy it is quite well done.

Sundry Stories. Lovers of the sentimental will doubtless enjoy Clive Arden s latest novel, “Tlie Veil of Glamour” (Leonard Parsons, per Robertson and Mullens), as much as they did the same author’s very successful “Sinners in Heaven.” The new story relates the experience of a pair of lovers who dare to brave the conventions, and whose “period of probation” is marked by trials and temptations all too many for most young people. Eventually, in an African scenario, the drama’ is terminated by the heroine’s renunciation of self, and there is fair promise of permanent happiness. Mr. G. P. Robinson’s “Nadine, a Romantic Comedy” (Duckworth and Co., per Robertson and Alullen), has for background the serio-comic principalitv of Alaranos, “the Alonte Carlo of the Eastern Alediterranean,” and for principal figures a gay young princess and an adventurous, debonnair, and very likeable young Englishman. Honestly. I am agreeably relieved when this pleasant pair of lovers unite their fates, and can well understand the aversion of the hero from State intrigues and his and his Nadine’s preference for a peaceful time in a flat in Kensington rather than doubtful honours in a palace in Perinth. Quite an engaging and agreeable story. It is doubtful whether the hero .of Lawrence David’s novel, “Tlie~ Kid Glove Skipper” (Leonard Parsons; per Robertson and Alullins) was not himself largely to blame for many of his misadventures. But John Bridgman, who was a naval sub-lieutenant in 1918, but who is undone by his capitulation to tlie sensuous charms of that feminine creation of the war, the enticing Irene, has, later on, some very remarkalie maritime experiences in the merchant marine. There is-sprue brilliant description of sea scenes, but the reader will have to decide for or against the acceptance of Irene as a girl really worth the winning. In “Alberte,” by Pierre Benoit (Herbert Jenkins) we have the tragedy of a woman of forty-two, widow of ,a minor French official she ..has never really loved, becoming '-the Slave of her passion, for her own daughter’s voung fiance. It is a bleak, indeed, terrible, story of the tragic result which ensues. The,reader must judge for himself, and alone shall pass judgment.