BOOKS and AUTHORS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 109, 1 February 1930, Page 28

BOOKS and AUTHORS

A Weekly Survey

By

“Liber”

Give a man a pipe he can woke, ■ Give a man a book he can read: And his home is bright with a calm delight > Though the rooin.be poor indeed. ; , —James Thomson.

BOOKS OF THE DAY

ALICE MEYNELL. Alice Meynell: A Memoir. By Viola Meyuell. (Cape, 15s. net.) This is a charming literary life set in the background of friends and family, and it is something more. The reader feels he has suddenly been given the key to a hortus inclusus. Hitherto Mrs. Meynell has been known entirely by her work in poetry and prose, and she has figured like a gracious wraith of mingled inspiration and criticism in the lives of Meredith. Coventry ratmore, and Francis Thompson. The present volume reveals more of her private relations. At the same time it is veined with pure ore. It opens with “a Dickens Frffendship” between the novelist and the mother of the poetess. Her’ father was his great, friend and' her mother’s name was Miss Weller. This pleasant reminiscence of the “Pickwick Papers” led to’lines by Dickens in the family album I find to mv cost thnt one Weller X lost, Cruel destiny so to arrange It! I love her dear name, which has won me some fame But Great Heaven how gladly I’d change it. . A burst of Dickens letters accompanied the courtship, ending in such pleas as “ask her to save the dress with the fur upon it. Let it be laid up in lavender. Let it never grow old, fade, shrink Or undergo millinerial alteration, but be a household God. Immortally Young and Perpetually Green. ...” The children of this marriage were Lady Butler, the painter, ami Alice Meynell. Not in vain betwixt bouts in lodging-houses was the Grand Tour by which their father taught them the meaning of words, colours and, above all, of Italy. The girlhood was recorded in an English diary filled with a delicate melancholy; “if I look in-. ward I find tears; if outward rain.” One sister became a famous war painter, and both passed into Boman Catholicism by the Gate Beautiful rather than by that of controversy. Alice could even criticise Newman’s poetry because of his many higher vocations. The priest who had received Alice encouraged her poetry, “but in keeping, with the strict precautionary rules of his priesthood it was considered best that this friendship should end.” The compensation of this chaste romance was the writing of some abiding poems, especially the sonnet on Renouncement which is now explained from life:— I must not think of thee; and tired yet strong I shun the thought that lurks in aU delight The thought jof thee and in the blue Heaven’s height. Aubrey do Vere was summoned to advise the budding poetess. Approval came from Tennyson and Coventry Patmore, but Ruskin’s words might have been, printed on post-cards and sent to the sundry aspirants for his praise, "It js*very pretty and may be helpful to many.” Later he wrote to her mother that the end of the Daisy sonnet and San Lorenzo were the finest things he had felt in modern verse. The b was a nervous visit to Tennyson paid by the two sisters. The circle of Sir Henry Taylor enclosed, her, but there was one alone whom 'she would have seen plain even vicariously. "All these people anight have seen Shelley, but, unfortunately,. it seems to be always Rogers>whpni they saw.” It was’something-to meet the curious being who could refer to the poet , (“the ■eternal child”) as “my, poor father.” Meantime marriage occurred, with Wilfrid Meynell and'the life passes into their literary: idyll. Matrimony .has been so knocked about in the modern world that it is difficult to think of ■ the Meyneljs as married except in one of those unions which are, not only made but continued in the Kingdom of Heaven. - Differences there were. For .instance,- it took, him almost as long to learn and believe in her powers of destroying as she in his fondness for keeping. Wilfrid was editing a paper for Cardinal Manning. He began and achieved “Merry England” chiefly as a periodical for Mrs. Meynell and an appropriate circle. Here appeared early work from Hudson and Belloc and Lionel .Johnson. And on a famous date there aryived some poems with a covering letter begging for rejection. It was signed Francis Thompson. He was ' unkempt. and diseased, but he joined the family circle —"the utterly dependent friend, the gentle, late, voluble, flushed, dozing visitor of-every day,” Francis Thompson so overwhelmed Mr. Meynell that, in his own daughter’s opinion. “if one were to imagine the nonexistence of that poetry one would have to imagine him a different man. But the poet whom Alice Meynell admired was Coventry Patmore. Though she found fhe erotic mysticism of his Odes difficult, she made the usefUl suggestion that “when the singer of a Song of Songs seems to borrow the phrase of human love, it is rather that human love had first borrowed the truths of the dove of God.” Her. daughter says: “Hik poetry broke her heart and was the ■ happiness of her life.” The inevitable friendship sprang between these lonely souls upon the heights. At Patmore's request, Sargent drew her portrait. Some lovely lines passed from his pen, including his Tory rejoinder to their Radical feelings-— Bear in your hat what badge you may. The Bed Republics even, So all your lovely ways obey The Monarchy o£ Heaven. ; After his death Mrs. Meynell destroyed all bis letters save a few. Some shadow had passed. George Meredith had become her friend, and Patmore recorded that his “primacy in, her friendship Ims been superseded. But his distant praise never ceased. He placed her contemplative powers with Mine, de Guyon’s, and wished her to succeed Tennyson as Laureate. It seemed as though she failed to satisfy the friends Whom she loved most. She described this failure "as a provision of grief for any night of my life. When news came of Patmore’s death she went immediately into a dark room and remained there, In 1911 the Meynells bought a Sussex property called Greathaul. It lay between the Barham Heronry and the Amberley Brooks. Wilfred Blunt and Hilaire Belloc were within reach of this unspoiled wilderness. .Au old farmhouse was improved and a library constructed, “though searches for lost letters and manuscripts and books were still a feature of family life.” Cottages,. descendants and visitors wer? collected, and a new life began, brokefi only by a last visit to Rome and the saddening war. From Rome she wrote a perfect indictment of the temple to the divine Victor Emmanlcl. . . It is dead white, and Rome is old living yellow and brown. They call this city the third Rome, characteristically ignoring (he Middle Ages, hut it the fourth. Ancient Romo was destroyed by fine and sword, Medi-

eval Rome by the pick-axe, Renaissance Rome, the most flagrant and triumphant of all, is being -superseded by the jerry-builders.

Mr. Meynell devoted his literary career to the fame of his wife and his discovery of’ Thompson, so. that he plays but a subsidiary.part in the book, though often he supplies humour. He reports a priest writing to him, "Forsaken by God and forgotten by man, I beg you to send me a copy of ‘Modern Society.’” Again he supplies Mrs. Meynell in America with the bon mot that there is many a slip betwixt the Cup and Lipton 1 In many ways Mrs. Meynell proved the curious rule that, though poets’ lives are usually tragical in marriage, poetesses , achieve the highest married bliss. To her husband she wrote the best of her short missives, whether from Rome or America. The over-priming of little domesticating In this book only makes a foil to the rich literary excerpts scattered through it. We want to know more of the Greatham life, as much as we. lament the loss of the Patmore letters. The book is very satisfying. It is what a literary biography should be, a welledited. anthology, and the Alice .Meynell who wrote her own life in so much familiar prose and. verse appears deliciously phantom-wise between quotations and in corners. Apart from the dutiful and humorous narrative, which proceeds from a mental companion rather than from an .abashed daughter, the reader has only to open it at random to find new s passages from the giants of old. Though no direct portrait is attempted, we are left with a vision of an English lady as Sargent drew her in the masterful silken sweeps of his crayon, sitting over a gipsy fire of bracken and, wet logs at the side Qf a Sussex farm hearth,' surrounded with precariously camping children and grandchildren; while literary visitors tiptoe the paving outside or are ushered hy her husband to visit the manuscript treasures of the house, which gradually are covered by a drift of lost proof-sheets or by an incessant shower of letters and appeals and, requests bearing American stamps. From time to time the lady stirs and scribbles a poem that poets will applaud when all else is dust.

The Man Beliind the Scenes—Sir Basil Zaharoff.

Dr. Richard Lavinsohn, the author, of "The Man Behind the Scenes; the Career of Sir Basil ZaharofT” (Victor Gollancz) is ft distinguished German publicist and editor of the well-known journal the “Volnlscpe Zeltung.” Dr. Lewinsohn traces the career, public and private, of Zaharoff, since his birth in an. obscure Anatolian village whence he made his way to Constantinople and became in time a great financier and ’ the head of more than one firm of arniamcnt makers. Zahardff had a stormy youth, but apparently he had a .characteristic Greek genius for finance', and managed to make his way through difficulties, which might well, have daunted many a man, -to a position whence he cOuld dictate the foreign policy of more than one’ important European State, and exercise a more or less • dominant influence over the’ defence policy, and therefore the expenditure upon armaments of others. It is quite clear from what Dr. Lewinsojm says that Zaharoffl has never allowed moral or other scruples to stand in the way of his personal aggrandisement. The story of how he succeeded in getting control of the Vickers and other allied munitions, works has its element'of moral'ugliness, but much of his. .personal, interference—with' his personal profit as the- ultimate object—was covered up during the war period under the heading of “exceptional services rendered to the Allies.” . At one time nicknamed the armaments king, and credited with hating made a fortune of over 12 millions, Zaharoff, feeling confident in the support of Lloyd George, "plunged” in the antl-Turkish campaign of Venezuelos, on which he spent over three millions, of his own money. He lived to find both Lloyd George and Venezuclos broken reeds upon whom to lean and towards the end of his career contented ■ himself with acquiring a controlling influence over" the gaining tables of Monte Carlo, out of which he sold, making ft: profit of nearly a million, only'about a year ago, retaining, however, proprietorship of the fashionable Hotel de Paris.. He is now nearly eighty, and even with all his losses must be an immensely wealthy man. The downfall of his’ influence pver Great Britain’s foreign policy was due to a courageous speech against Lloyd George by Iflent.-Colonel Guinness, and who, when the Conservatives withdrew from the Coalition, became Under-Secretary for War. With Guinness’s .accession to office the Zaha-roff-Vickers influence was broken. Lewisohn tells the story of this remarkable Greek, setting down, it is true, naught in malice, but leaving unsaid naught that redounds to Zafia‘roff's credit. Not Until 1924 did he marry. The bride’s name was Madame del Pilar Antonia-Angela-Patiscisso-Simona de Maquiro y Bernecte, the widowed Duchesse de Villafrance, who died during the spring of 1926, Zaharoff being then well on to eighty. Dr. Lewisohn’s biography claims to tell the whole truth concerning this remarkable Greek, “the man behind the scenes” of so many great financial enterprises, but startling and. sensational though it is, it is probable that there is still much left untold. ’The illustrations comprise reproductions of Zaharofl: at various stages of his career. (16/-.)

SOME RECENT FICTION The Foet and the Pub. When Saturday Keith becomes the manager of Lady Mercy Cotton’s hotel, “The Downy Pelican,” otherwise known as “The Poet's Pub” (Jonathan Cape), he runs that hostelry upon very original lines. It is not long before he is mixed up in the comedy of Messrs. Van Buren and Weston, ip which a lively, good-looking and very cheeky female reporter, Nelly Bly, takes part. “Saturday” Keith does not cease writing verse when he adopts the role of a publican, and Mr. Linklater gets much fun out of the publishing experiences. Quentin Cotton, who is interested in “Cotton’s Entire” and other beverages sold by Keith, is also a leading character, but the honours of the story must go to Nolly Bly. who secures Cotton for a trip to Madeira and marriage. A very jolly and original story,-whose author, so the publishers assure us. is destined to become a second Aldous Huxley.

"Bonzer Jones.” “Bonzer Jones” (Mills and Boon), by Walter Smyth, is, I should say, a New Zealand story about a girl who is left’ an impoverished sheep station by her father. A ruthless and greedy syndicate tries hard .to make’the girl sell the property, but Bonzer Jones comes on to the station and fights the girl’s battles, with the final results which will satisfy all who love wholesome sentiment. David Not the Giant Killer. From Harrop and Co. “Giant Killer,” by Elmer Davis. The author is a prominent young American journalist who was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. The story is a profoundly human study of David, King of Israel, who got credit for killing giants, though he did not kill even Goliath. The real hero is, however, David’s nephew, Joab, who worshipped him as a boy and served him loyally as his general. The tragedy of Joab—his disillusionment, his frustrated love, and his death by the hands of David’s son —is the central feature of a powerfully written romance. An Anglo-Indian Story-

Frrom Hodder and Stoughton. ’’Plot Water,” by Mrs. G. H. Bell (John Travers).. *Thp story, of a British commission (a "Commission .of Health, Hygiene and . Welfare”) which visits India and is headed by Lord Brierley, whose private secretary- is a family friend, the lovely Anne Keighley, who is eventually snapped up by young Pctworth, a military officer who comes to blows with • Brierley and thereby causes a scandal which is the joy of the. Indian- Nationalists and antiBritish Press. With exquisite humour, the author describes the progress of the Commission, ..whose head, by the way, has his eye on the Governorship of New Zealand—which he doesn’t get—and throws many interesting, sidelights upon Indian problems, accompanying the same.by some acute observations of Anglo-Indian social life. A most amusing and, in its way, highly informative novel on Indian affairs. ■■ Himself, and Mr. Kffikes.-. ■

In his psychological study, "Himself and Mr. Raikes” (Hutchinson), Mr. W. R. Maxwell seems to have cut himself adrift from his earlier style. Raikes is. a cleverly drawn character, whose greatest fault, from youth -upwards, is his inherent insincerity. Of an artisr tic bent, he is hampered by an unsympathetic trustee, and is induced to .join' in the non-artistic actualities of a.’.person called Gedge, ’- which, however, bring him in commercial success. He marries a woman whom he really does not love, hut finds himself, involved in amorous experiences with other women, never, however, hiving the courage to rid. himself of his surroundings... The last chapters of .this, weak, man’s career, witnesses, however,' his rescue, from death of a poor .girl, and an appa rent change of heart. and •mind'to which'he is impelled by the friendship—first started by. the war—of a doctor comrade. Mr.. Maxwell, writes well, but honestly Jiis .most recent novel leaves us rather cold. “Nicky, Son of Egg.”

Sori/y very -good judges." of fiction, including Hugh Walpole, Clemence: Dang,’J. B._ Priestley; and George Gordon, have selected Mr. Gerald Bullett's new. novel, . “Nicky, Son of : Egg” (Heinemann),.as one of the best stories of the season, but'after’reading the opening chapters, wherein Nicky, with some other Scouts, fights "and conquers the “blaggb,’.’ we "confess tojsome disappointment that the author should have condemned him to die in a shellhole in France. The story is the’continuation of the “History of Egg Pa ndervil’,” that elderly and gently born grocer who is .so .engaging a figure, in which, as: some readers may remember, there were so many delightful passages. We now meet Nicky at school, at home, in Mershire, where Mr. Crabbe makes a 'farmer'of him, and afterwards on his own fiirm, the- bequest -of his' exuberant Uncle Alby. Nicky’s elder brother Harold?, who seduces the' maid of all work but- marries her and takes over the Pandervil shop, is an..ugly but well-drawn character, and we can understand and sympathise with the poetic dreams of Nicky as he reads to his wife. But the father whom we met r)ad liked so much in the first book is, after all, the dominant figure in the second. Nicky is nominally the hero of the second stroy, but it is his father who still has our heart. In the Congo.

“Bed Ivory,” by Walton Hall Smith (Skellington), is a dramatically drawn picture of life and adventure in an African . jungle, the story having, for hero a voung American, who goes out to' the Congo • to represent his father, an American ivory merchant, and there finds himself confronted by an unscrupulous Belgian official, who thwarts him in every way, for. a time selling into slavery a beautiful half-caste girl whom he has first met in Spain, arid who, fortunately, he is able to rescue. Mr. Smith's picture of life and adventure in the Belgian Congo territory are very striking in their local colour. Horrors Galore.

As a collection of horrors, Mr; Sean McGuire’s “Spider Island” (Selwyn and Blount) will not easily be paralleled. There is a treasure hunt on a lonely South Sea Island, but that is a feature of only minor interest. One/ of the characters is a sea captain who, after eating of a fig-like plant, becomes covered with a growth which gives him the appearance of a rock, although retaining the intelligence of a human being. Upon a group of islands some where in the Pacific, the adventurers found themselves covered with small spiders, which iu their turn are the prey of a giant spider, one of whose great legs measures five feet! This the treasure seekers shoot; thereby ridding the islanders of a dreaded enemy. But there are worse monsters of an entomological kind, to be coped with, including a ghastly sea slug, which attracts and swallows whole one of the party, and it is safe to say that Mr. McGuire’s marvels, the description of which is given in most affrighting detail, proves him possessed of a very weird imagination. “The Gentleman Jewel Thief.”

In“ Sir Joseph’s-Guests” (Hutchinson! Miss Emmeline Morrison gives a thrilling description of the adventures and escapades:of Mr. Jeremy Holwood, the-“gentleman jewel thief.” who. now under his owu name reappears in Englland after a Song stay in the Braizils,

and who now, in conjunction with Miss Flora Mary Willoughby, soon becomes involved in a series of exciting , and dangerous situations, from which his wit and cleverness alone enable the pair to escape. The Scotland Yard sleuths sem to me a little slow at arriving at a correct view of Holwood’s chara'cter. With smarter “tecs.” he would not have been allowed to leave England so easily, but those who remember Miss Morrison’s “Light Fingers” will be interested iu “The Hunters” new adventures.