BOOKS and AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 175, 20 April 1929, Page 29

BOOKS and AUTHORS

A Weekly Survey

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. —Janies Thomson.

BOOKS OF THE DAY The Oldest London Bookshop. Many u New Zealand book lover has, no doubt, been privileged to “browse” a little in that famous London bookshop which, founded so far back as 1728, still survives at 29 New Bond Street, under the name of “Ellis.” The history of this famous haunt of English, and especially London, book collectors, is now set forth in a handsome' quarto, entitled “The Old London Book Shop, 1728-1928” (Ellis, New Bond Street). Written and completed by George Smith and Frank Benger. The letters of John Brindley, Mrs. Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale), Johnson’s friend, was one of his customers, and James Robson, who was an honoured friend of many of the later eighteenth century booksellers, are drawn upon for details of the old firm, the letters of Horace Walpole, John Nichols, author of “Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,” and many other eighteenth century documents being also quoted, and a vast amount of bibliographic and bibliophilic information given of considerable interest to latter-day collectors. The plates include portraits of the founders of the old firm, their trade cards, a view of New Bond Street in 1835, reproductions of bookbindings by John Brindley, together with facsimiles of letters by Mrs. Piozzi, and several literary notables of the earlier days of the firm. The whole publication is one of special interest to students of literary and publishing life in London. (135.) “The Indiscreet Limerick Book.” Mr. Langford Reed, who compiled that amusing collection of humorous verse, “The Complete Limerick Book,” is now responsible for a further collection of “limericks,”’“The Indiscreet Limerick - Book” (Jarrolds), the examples of this gay tomfoolery in verse being all of his own composition. The whole of the specimens were the result of the author breaking his leg on an ice-sheeted London stret, when he beguiled the greater part of his convalescence in hospital in the invention of new and laughable samples of limerick making. The first sample sets the tone of the collection. Said a doctor in far Abyssinia: “From the grave I can’t possibly win yer: T’ra frightfully sotry, But the wheel of that lorry Has made such a big abyss-in-yer.” This is not a bad one: Said the wile of a farmer in Larne: “My stockings I’ve torn in that barn; You must buy me some more To replenish my store”; But the brute merley murmured, “Oh darn!” There are some appropriately funny drawings to many of the rhymes. (3s. 6d.) The Ideal Country. Sir Francis Younghusband’s “Coming Country” (Murray) exhibits quite another side of its author’s mind. We associate the author more particularly with his records of geographical work in the Himalayas, but here he comes forward as the advocate of a new ideal state, his ideal being like unto the dreamings of Bunyan and Sir Thomas Moore, and, in more modern days, of Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” and Butler’s “Erewhon.” Sir Francis favours the establishment of a new League whose object shall be the practical Christianisation of the home, the inculcation of homely unselfish virtues, such as absolute honesty, in each and every department of life, and the gradual evolution of a better, more spiritual conception of what life really is. The dream of what “Ourownland” shall be, “a Christ country in the process of development,” the “spiritual leaders of the people” to act as “the responsible agents of God through whom it must be brought into being,” is set forth, often in passages of great beauty. This is, in many ways, a very fine allegory. (10s.) Wages. To the Cambridge Economic Handbooks (Nisbet and the Cambridge United Press) has been added a volume “Wages,” by Maurice Bobb, M.A., lecturer in Economics, Cambridge University. Mr. Dobbs sets out the characteristic features of a wage system, and elucidates,, with several illustrations, the relation between wage rates, earning and the working class standard of life. Profit-sharing and different methods of payments by results are discussed, the extent and causes of the difference in'wages between occupationla groups, countries, and the sexes, are examined, the book closing with an inquiry into the influence of trades tmions and of legislation on the wage contract. (7.)

LIBER’S NOTEBOOK “Liber” is loath is “butt in,” as the saying goes, into any educational controvery, but he has noticed with great pleasure that “Scottie” has recently taken up arms in warm opposition to the views expressed on the teaching of French : by a schoolmaster named Combs, who recently delivered himself of a quite severely-worded philippic against the value of French to the young New Zealander. I cannot help thinking that if Mr. Combs, who voiced his opinions on the subject of French to the School Committees’ Association, had any- extensive knowledge of the French language and literature, and any wide acquaintance with the wide use of French terms and expressions in the world outside New Zealand, he would scarcely have committed himself to such a wholesale condemnation of the alleged utility of the Gallic tongue. Personally, I am no great belivet in the wisdom of what is called the junior high school system, but this is a literary, not an educational, column. But I am concerned, and think all intelligent people should be concerned, as to the value of New Zealanders possessing some fair knowledge of French, for such’ I 'knowledge is, I take it, strongly essential. As one who, as a,young man, spent four years in France, and who taught French —I am now afraid rather inadequately, in a secondary school—and as one who all his life has spent much of his leisure in reading, the best French literature, and who in travels at the other end of the world has found for himself the enormous value of an acquaintance with what is for most Europeans the most generally useful of all languages, I object very strongly to it being belittled by a primary pedagogue, who evidently has scant knowledge of its enormous intellectual value.

Young New Zealanders require more than anything that their mental outlook should be strengthened rather than narrowed, and this is precisely the effect of such foolish diatribes as that ‘ which fell from Mr. Combs recently. I only trust he has been misreported and misunderstood, h language of the allround intellectual and commercial value of French should surely be held in higher opinion by those whom we trust with the education of our young, people. , There is probably no Australian artist whose progress is more, worthy of study by young New Zealand artists than Mr. Elioth Gruner, who fairly deserves to be classed with Mr. George Lambert, A.R.A., Mr. Hans Heysen, and Mr. Streeton, as being among the front rank of Australian artists. There has recently been published, by- “Art in Australia,” Sydney, a special number of that fine art periodical, devoted to “The Recent Work of Elioth Gruner,’ who, by the way, we have a right to be specially proud of in New Zealand, for he is, I believe, a Dannevirke boy by birth. Six or seven years ago “Art in Australia” published a special number on Mr. Gruner’s art, which showed him to be a most accomplished paysagite, specially gifted in his capacity to render complicated and delicate atmospheric effects in early morn.

I particularly recall the beautiful early morning frost effects, in tne presentation of which no one' has ever surpassed. Gruner. The artist spent close upon a couple of,'years recently studying and painting in London, Paris, and on the Riviera, widening and strengthening his point of view of nature. The result is this second volume (the March issue of “Art in Australa”), a very charmng collection of reproductions, several in the colours of the originals, of Gruner's work, in which much greater attention is paid not only to form and design, and in which, while there is greater clarity of expression, there is a wiser reticence in the spontaneity of his art. Not only are there fine examples of Gruner’s art in Europe, but many of his later Australian landscapes are reproduced, and there are examples of his skill in the painting of still life and interior scenes which prove the fine development of natural talent. The whole number, which has the advantage of a critically appreciative estimate, by Basil Burdette, of Gruner’s notable output in art, is well worthy the attention of all art lovers.

P. Neville Barnett, Esq., Sydney, I have to acknowledge the last published Year Book of the Austradian Ex-Libris Society, containing not only the presidential report of the society by the Hon. John Lane Mullins, and the informative secretary’s report, but also includes reproductions of ex-libris by Cyril Dillon, L. Roy Davies, Franz Weitzel, George Collingridge, Adrien Feist, Hilda Wiseman (Auckland. N.Z.). Herbert Cole, Lionel Lindsay, P. Neville Burnett, and others. The plates by Hilda Wiseman and George Collingridge seem to me specially successful.

I have always contended that a fine field a wails such New Zealand designers of book plates who may specialise in this class of design. Every good bookman should have his own book plate, in which so many varied hobbies and tastes may be represented artistically.

SOME RECENT FICTION “Harness.” A.- Hamilton Gibbs, a member of the now famous Gibbs family, made a special hit with his novel, “Soundings.” Me is now again to the fore with “Harness” (Hutchinson and Co.), in which the motif is mainly the matrimonial experiences of a post-war married couple, midway, as it were, between two generations. The husband, an unsuccessful author, the couple find it difficult to make ends meet, so Pat, the pretty young wife, becomes an actress. The question arises whether her head will be turned by flattery and an at-, fractive leading man or whether her child and her love for her husband hold her safe to Michael. This she does in the long run. Mr. Gibbs cleverly depicting the troubles and temptations of the pair, a subsidiary interest being the determination of Pat's very modern sister, who, disgusted by marriage, succeeds, with Michael’s help, in rebuilidng her own life. A well-written story of normal people.

Get Along Alone. I cannot say that I am greatly impressed with the reality of most of the personages presented in L. W. Vedrenne's novel, “Get Along Alone” (Allen and Unwin), the heroine of which, Jane Lacie, brought up in inland China, has various sentimental experiences. There is a quite impossible father, a more than impossible German wealthy partner of his who, although sixty, has a decided penchant for the young lady, but impossible as they are, the sudden and Wayward decision of the girl to spend a few days, living under an assumed name, at a Cornish hotel with a Jew Socialist, the natural son of Sir Jacob Schmul, her elderly admirer, is to me as repulsive as it is out of all accordance with her character. We leave Jane, however, at the sober age of thirty-four, marrying at last, a man ten years older than herself, to whom, when she tells her extraordinary past, he simply smiles, “leaning fiver the table between them to refill her glass of wine.” Jane Lacie is a frankly impossible person. We wish her well, but have our doubts as to her future happiness.

By Ford Madox Ford. Since the completion of that remarkable series "The Tietjens” Novels, not much has been heard of Conrad’s old collaborateur, Ford Madox Ford. He has now come forward again as a storyteller of considerable pow’er and originality in his Napoleonic romance “A Little Less Than God’s” (Duckworth and Co.). Here we have a romance of “The Hundred Days,” as seen through the eyes of a young Englishman who admired Napoleon, and whom Waterloo and its aftermath for France sent across the Atlantic to found a new home in Verginia. The story commences with the advent to Elba of an English hunting squire, Assheton Smith, master of the Quora, and one in whom is all the pride personified of a typical Englishman of his day, the plot dealing with Napoleon’s return to France, and the part played in the brief Napoleonic renaissance in which Marshal Ney, Due d’Elchlngin, and Prince de la Moskawa, together with the Tsar himself, Madame de Krudener, and other historical personages, figure. Mr. Ford’s romantic presentation of the scenes which followed Waterloo are shared in by the Baronne de Freyfus and other women. The author has taken many liberties with accepted Jiistory, sentiment and passionate love playing no small part in his romance. The writer’s skill in telling his story in the true vein of romance and of making partly fictitious personage inspired by his fertile and rich imagination is as notable as in the past. Sundry Stories. “The Beehive,” by Elizabeth Powell (Cornstalk Co., Sydney), is a very praiseworthy example of Australian fiction, incident, pathos and humour being happily blended in this story of the disapeparance of Major Campbell on a scientific expedition to the Islands and the successful search by his resourceful wife, their four children, all B’s— Bob and Barby, Brenda and Bubbles—being charmingly unspoilt natural youngsters who live in a seaside cottage called “The Beehive.” “Penelope’s Webb,” by Harriet T. Comstock (Cornstalk Co., Sydney), is a simply-told but very pleasant story of the Dane family, with a very charming heroine who should gain the affection of all the readers of his excellent 'family history. Florence Fitzpatrick’s “Something Always Happens” (Hutchinson), is the story of the extraordinary happenings which fall to the lot of two young sisters, one, Ursula Morel aunt, being invited to stay with her by an old school friend, Lady Wallingford, and Nancy, in a moment of devilry, electing to accompany her as her maid. Their sen-

timental adventures with some cligibl young men in the house party and lb theft of a famous jewel are prominen features in a very delightful story.