BOOKS of the WEEK

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 19

BOOKS of the WEEK

ezvxa Reviews and Passing Notes

EDWARD VII: THE PEACEMAKER

Mr. Benson’s Appreciation Is Brilliant and Just

-King Edward VII: An Appreciation.” by E. F. Benson (London: Longmans).

Mr. Benson has styled bis study of King Edward VII “an appreciation.” But that does not mean that he has consciously emphasised all the virtues and obscured all the faults; and while there Is throughout the book a constant feeling of sympathy with the subject, it has not prevented the author from tackling courageously the problem of presenting in a true light the one or two questionable incidents in Edward’s history. The worst of course was what has come to be known as the baccarat scandal. In a game for which the Prince had supplied the counters, a. colonel in the Scots Guards was accused of cheating. The affair was momentarily hushed up, but later the full story came out in court proceedings and public in-

dignation against & the Prince ran K high. His fault, as | Mr. Benson says, g was that he had in- g dttlged in a game of baccarat in a pri- S rate house; the rest g of the disastrous g business was his 8 misfortune. But the | stake had been high—the value of

the counters ran from 5/- to HO-and the pubic, or a large section of it, wiui considerable justification was , horrified. And certainly the Prince s own view, as he expressed it later to Mr. Benson’s father the Archbishop of Canterbury, would not have been well received. He asserted that he had a horror of gambling as he understood it, and his definition of it was that, gambling meant risking sums one could not afford to lose; the mere fact of playing cards for money did not constitute it. Incidentally he revealed the fact that the first time he played cards for money was when, as an Oxford undergraduate, he played whist at three-penny points with Bishop Samtiel Wilberforce. * There can be no doubt that the Prince’s early preoccupation with the lighter side of life was in large measure a reaction, from his strict upbringing. His father had been naturally studious and could not understand how any son of his could be otherwise. The Queen thought exactly as her adored Albert did. But Edward had his own methods of acquiring wisdom. He learned from men what his father learned from books, and Mr. Benson makes it quite clear what a tragedy it was that he was given no opportunity until so late in life of putting into practice his valuable diplomatic attainments. The Queen’s distrust of him and long-continued refusal to allow him to play any responsible part in affairs of State lost for England a service that, to say the least, would have been most helpful. This, Edward showed when at last he succeeded to the Throne. In spite of having been so badly handicapped, he had nevertheless acquired a knowledge of European politics and of social conditions at home, which, coupled with his, splendid judgment of men, made him a first-class statesman, and one with a paramount influence on the Continent. lie worked now as hard as his father had done before him. but his reign, alas, was too short for him to accomplish his ultimate purpose—the assurance of the peace of Europe. Mr. Benson hardly gives the space to politics that one could wish for, though perhaps his role of popular biographer prevents that. He does, however, provide, as is more suited to his purpose, a very fine character sketch of Edward, or rather one should call it a full-length portrait, showing a most pleasant personality to great advantage. And as one has learned to expect from the author of ‘“Dodo,” judged from the literary point of view, the work is brilliant.

A FAMILY HISTORY ‘‘The Records of the ITinglcs." by Alex. Pringle (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd). This finely produced volume records the history of one of the leading families of the Scottish Border from the thirteenth century to the present day. The name of Hoppri'ngill or Pringle first appears in the reign of Alexander 111., and bearers of it have been prominent in Border history ever since. The account here given of their activities is worthy to take its place with the records of such families as the Elliots, the Douglases and the Cockburns.

[TO-DAY'S REVIEWS I i “King Edward VII" j = “Opium.” = = “L’Affaire Jones.” j i “Water on the Brain.” j I ‘The Wild Horses of Iceland.” | Tiliuiuiui.iinui

THE LIGHTER TOUCH "L’Affaire Jones,” by Hillel Bernstein (London: Goilancz) ; “Water on the Brain,” by Compton Mackenzie (London : Cassell) ; “Mr. Jiggins of Jigginstown,” by Christine Longford (London: Goilancz) ; “Heavy Weather." by P. G. W’odehouse (London. Jenkins); “Saint on Holiday, by Geoffrey JJearmer (Loudon: Heinemann).

When the American hero of “L’Affaire Jones” went to Paris to gather material for his book on French cookery he expected no doubt to lead his usual quiet and unassuming life. Unfortunately one day he quarrelled with the proprietor or his usual eating-place about the quality of the food supplied, and on top of that he was accused of having stolen a coat. So back to the restaurant he goes to establish an alibi, only to be met with fine disdain:

"You are an enemy o£ la cuisine franeaise.” . ■ „ t "Not of la good cuisine francaise, I insisted. “Am I not writing a cook book about la good cuisine francaise?" “Only to insult it, without doubt, he said. “La France, which saved you at Verdun, and for which service, instead of being grateful, you demand- that we pay the debt—.” . , . , ‘•Monsieur,” I broke in, desperately, “please don’t tell me about Verdun. Please try to forget la France and Verdun for a moment, and tell madame whether I was here for lunch to-day.” The restaurateur became majestic, there was fire In his eye. "Forget la France? Forget Verdun? Never! Vive la France!” The cry, taken up by sixty or seventy throats, was coupled with “A bas Jones, and spread throughout the country. The stolen coat was forgotten; I’Affaire Jones became a problem of international importance- And poor Jones, harried from pillar to post scorched by the fiery limelight. finds himself iu one farcical situation after another This is hilarious satire at its best. There is sufficient wit on every page to keep the reader in a constant giggle, and the plot itself is handled so deftly that the most self-con-scious Frenchman could not take offence. Mr. Mackenzie, too, makes his satire very hilarious. His butt is the Secret Service in its peace-time activities. It is not long since Mr. Mackenzie found himself in trouble for giving away official secrets in a book of reminiscences. “I have always attempt-

ed,” hr says in the dedication of “Water

on the Brain.” “to extract from the disagreeable experiences

which have come my

way in life a compensation from the experience itself, and

a recent annoyance of mine was . thus <•

transformed into , something akin to pleasure. And for the render it is all very pleasant indeed. 1 ( rom the time when Major Blenkiusop very secretly and strictly eon fi(lentl 2 l 'V? vited to'join the Intelligence Staff to the end of the whole amusing business when he emerges happily, a Commander of the Sacred Source of Mcndacia with its ribbon of eau de nil watered silk his collar, Mr. Mackenzie keeps the fun going atop. He makes .the most of his opportunity in bright caricature of a system which bv its mysterious nature lends itself admirably to such gay treatment. Lady Longford’s wit is much less obvious than that of any other author in this group, but it is there for the discerning. deliciously apparent. Her portrait of a family of fortune-hunters, hypocrites all of them and all of them knowing it, gathered together in 'an Irish house waiting for its master to die. is delightfully done, and her study of philosophic old Mr. Jiggins himself is a special joy. Lady Longford writes this ankle-deep stuff perfectly. but one could wish sometimes that she would leave the surface, and delving deeper, provide some of the more solid fare of which she is so obviously capable. With Mr. Wodehouse one goes back to farce, his own typical brand, which S^O'''S no sign of falling off in quality. The scene is laid in and around Blandings Castle, the home of the Earl of Emsworth and his prize pig, the Empress. Here come and go the Hon. Galahad Threepwood. author of a much sought-after manuscript of scandalous memoirs; Lady Julia Fish and her son Ronald, the last of the Fishes; Sue Brown, chorus girl and fiancee of Ronald; Viscount Tilbury, proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company; P. Frobisher Pilbeam. onetime editor of “Society Spice,” and now detective; Monty Bodkin, an attractive popinjay: Lady Constance, who in her sterner moments could stare haughtily from a high-backed chair like Cleopatra about to get down to brass tacks with an Ethiopian slave; and, of course, the old retainer, Beach, the butler this time, as wise and faithful as any Jeeves. The plot is as wildly impossible as one would expect and the characters talk and act in keeping. Excellent non-stop funny business.

“If you like Mr. Dearmer's style,” says the publisher, “you will like his story.” But his style unfortunately is one that many readers may find tiresome. The plot.’ one in which a present-day saint finds a place of refuge in the zoo from the too-pressing attentions of the public, has many bright moments and considerable originality. CHARM AND QUALITY

“This was England.” by Horace Annesley Vachell (London: Hodder and Stoughton).

“Why don’t you collect material for a hook of months dealing with our feasts and festivals, with legends of the countryside you know well, with the less familiar proverbs, with some of the myths about birds and flowers, and. incidentally, with the charm of this England that was?” This rather lengthy and exacting question was once asked Mr. Vachell and he, to use his own phrase, jumped at the suggestion. “This was England” is the result. With his own intimate knowledge of one particular section of England—from the New Forest to the Mendip and the Wye Valley—and the help of knowledge gleaned from others, from the everyday books of Hone, Brand, Chambers, Southey and Benn for instance, Mr. Vachell has gathered together snippets of information about old customs and legends, tales of the oldest inhabitants, of any gaffer or gammer whose accuracy could be vouched for, glimpses of the countryside, in fact anything that could be fitted into his scheme of things. And all these facts and fancies he has enlivened by his musings and observations, set forth in his own delightful way. Tie begins with January and takes one leisurely through the months to his valedictory chapter, in which he speaks of the pleasure this compilation has given him ns the ardor venatoris. What, he sought for in the by-ways of a passing England was charm and quality. And these attributes his book has in plenty.

“Now.” quod the fox. “alace and welloway; fiorrit I am, and may no Ifortlier gane; Methink no man may speke a word in play Bot now on dayis In ernlst it Is tune! In the last stanza of the lovely poem, “The Annunciation,” Henryson shows another side of his art., an ability to write verse calm and beautiful: O lady lele and lusumest, Thy lace moist fair and schene Is. O blosum blithe and howsiimest, Fra carnale cryme that clone Is! This prayer fra my spiene Is, That all my werkis wikkitest Thou put away, and mak me chaist Fra termigant that teyn Is; And fra his cluke that kene Is; And syne till lievln my satiie thou hoist, Qnhar thi makar of michtis mast Is kyng, and thow thair quene Is. A debt of gratitude is due to Mr. Harvey Wood for the splendid manner in which he has edited these poems from many hiterto unknown manuscript, and printed sources, and made them available for general reading. One may not agree with him in placing Henryson, as he does, on a higher pinnacle than his contemporary. William Dunbar, but this most excellent collection of poems and fables is none the less welcome for that. ICELANDIC SCENES “Tlte Wild Horses of Iceland,” by Svend Fleuron (London : Eyre and Spottiswoode).

TORTURED WRITING

Power of Opium

The Diary of a Slave to the

“Opium: The Diary of an Addict- by Jean Cocteau, translated from the French by Ernest Boyd (London: Allen and Unwin).

YORKSHIRE FISHING BOATS “Sail and Oar/’ one hundred drawings by Ernest Dade (London: Dent). To anyone who is interested in the sea and shipsi, Mr. Dade’s drawings o now obsolete Yorkshire fishing and yawls will have an irresistible attraction? The drawings were done m tue ’Bo’s and ’9o’s, and show the boats, men and methods of fishing in the Csorth between the Tees and the Humber before iron, steam and the internal com bustion engine changed it all. V us v ! s .,, il book of a departed glory, for the /.oikshire fishing coble and the Yorkshire smack were about the finest examples »r English sea-going craft ever devised.

As a black and white artist, Mr. Dade was probably not the shining light o his day. which was a long time ago. H drawings are old-fashioned in their met culous attention to detail, however crowded, this being an influence of the age m printing by the engraving method, course it must be remembered that the drawings are from sketch books 40 and 50 years old. Of their type they are well enough done; they have certain great qualities that should fully appease, the critical modern : they all .have an air o freshness not to be gainsaid, of movement of wind and wave, and, above all, or genuineness in impression; and. ant above all, they are entirely sonect from a yachtsman's viewpoint. Here the particularly careful form ot execution is a distinct advantage, rovings of the peak halyards or. bobstn tackle, for instance, are detailed and correct, and. in fact, no rope is where a rope should not be. This alone will win the approbation for the book of any follower of the sea. Mr. t)ade has bee obviously a sound North Sea yachtsman. He lias drawn to him familiar and loved spbject provided by what was once either bis calling or his hobby, and for that reason he has faithfully tried to capture th lt r iTwell that those old sketch books were not lost and that extracts from them are now published. No one else can draw those delightful subjects: because they have ceased to exist. Sail and Oar” is a timely and permanent record of a departed era. If its publication had been made forty years ago it would have had very little significance;. but now, modest and unassuming as it. is, by a moderate exercise of the imagination it will surely he understood that it is an irreplaceable record of the last great days of the fisherman of England before the use of petrol finally replaced the use of the. wind, and the propeller replaced the sail. . A piece of the history of England is here before us, even though it is only a book composed of a few score of sketches, not one of which can be said to be particularly worth framing. SIGHTSEERS’ HANDBOOK “See For Yourself,” a Field-book for Sightseers, by Edmund Vale (London: Dent). This book should be a boon to the earnest sightseer in England; and for the stay-at-home who cannot see the sights it can by its general interest provide a pleasant hour. “Sightseeing,” says Mr. Vale, “is ah art without masters, a religion without a priesthood, a science without experts, and a technique without a vocabulary. Although it has millions of votaries, myrmidious and officials it is something which has never been codified, an almost unbelievable anomaly in the light in the present day.” It is an anomaly which Mr. Vale in some measure has now removed. He has divided his book into two parts. The first he calls the reading , stuff for home service. It is brightly written with plenty of anecdotes to eoat the pill of facts. Prehistory, first legacies of history, the Gothic style and the Renaissance have each a chapter to themselves. In the second part Mr. Vale gets down to business. This is a compendium for the hustler. With its aid he can plan his day. select his object—Roman remains, cathedral, castle or whatever it may be — and. bv following up Mr. Vale's clues and directions, read off its history, and store his mind with facts about it. Ruth Vale contributes a number of interesting illustrations. MISCELLALNY According to the London “Graphic” Mr. John Drinkwater recently applied for member..hip of the Saintsbury Club. The club is exclusive, and encourages an appreciation of rare wines. There was one objector. He snirl seriously that the proposed member’s name was not in keeping with the club's aims!. The objection was overruled.

“I am writing these lines,” M. Cocteau records at the beginning of his book, “after twelve, days and twelve nights without sleep.” This was during a period of disintoxication at a clinic at St. Cloud, where, he says, he changed from “a state considered abnormal to a state considered normal.” M. Cocteau’s constant need of selfexpression found an outlet in these tortured notes and drawings. Needless to say, they make up a very queer book, overruled at every moment of its creation by the dictates of opium. The prose varies from a vivid lucidity to a strangely fanciful obscurity. In its presentation of the author’s feelings it goes by leaps and bounds, now In exulting heights, then in depressing depths. But even at their most fantastic, these broken recollections and thoughts on a hundred subjects exercise a remarkable fascination over the reader.

The power of the drug has distorted everything, but at the same time it has sharpened in most startling fashion the author’s mind and given him the agonising ability of writing, one might put it, with his bare. nerves. Clear inspiration seems to have come in flashes only; the rest is an irresponsible confusion of ideas poured forth from a mind pathologically hypersensitive.

The author’s drawings, like his prose, are indicative of his mental state. Some of them are powerfully and roughly drawn, conceived and executed, it seems, in a single inspiration. Others are calculated arrangements of cylinders, whose purpose, like that of much of his writing, is by no means clear. Mr. Boyd’s translation is particularly good. A GREAT SCOTTISH POET ‘The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson,” edited by H. Harvey Wood (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd). . Robert Henryson, “sometimes cheife schoolemaster in Dunfermling” is known to most lovers of English literature by two poems. One is "The Testament of Cresseid” which formerly was always added to Chaucer’s “Troilus and Cressida” to form a fitting conclusion. The other is the pastoral “Robene and Makyne,” which provides the reader with a glimpse of the real Henryson he will not get from the “Testament of Cressida, for all its correetitude and polish. Henrvson was essentially a rustic poet and he is to be seen at his best in his presentation of Aesop’s "Moral Fables.” These he tells with an abundance of energy and humour. He crowds them with such detail and wealth of personal observation, all the time ranging up and down the scale from the ridiculous to the pathetic, that they have become probably the hest fables of their kind ever told. The material he uses is perfectly commonplace, yet he builds it _ into something astonishingly rich and vital. From the moralist of the “Testament of Cresseid one would hardly have expected the keen sense of humour shown for instance in “The Fox and the Wolf,” to take one example from the many offering- The fox had been forbidden by his confessor to eat meat. But he kills a kid and dips it in a stream: — He doukit him and till him can he sayne, “Ga doun schir Kid, cum up schlr salmond

wes deld; syne to the land him drewch. , , And of that new inald salmond eit

enewch. With that the fox stretched himself out and reflected, apparently without first touching wood, that a distended belly like his needed only an arrow in it to complete the picture. From the bow of the keeper of the herd the arrow duly arrived :—

In addition to his new book on Hampden, Mr. John Drinkwater has finished a new play, intended to show the effect of Christ’s teaching on a contemporary Jewish household.

Strong first lines are one sign of inspiration in poetry, remarks the “Birmingham Bost.” They probably help more than is suspected the vogue of some of our shorter poems with the average reader. Hence the frequent inquiries of correspondents for the title and author of a poem beginning this and thus.

One of the most familiar puzzles of Shakespearean text is Hamlet’s sentence, “When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw” ; and one of the most familiar solutions is that “handsaw” should be “hernshaw” (heron). Mr. Hugh de Blncam offers another solution in a letter to “The Times Literary Supplement,” suggesting that the accepted commentators are “missing one of the richest of Shakespeare’s puns, and .are weakening the meaning of the Prince” : —

If Hamlet really said, “I ani not mad —I know a hawk from a heron,” he argued feebly; for to know a quick bird from a slow is proof of good eyesight, nothing else. A subtler reading is needed. A student of Shakespeare in Dublin, who is a craftsman, proposed a .solution which I would like to submit to scholars. A mason uses a board with a handle under it to carry his mortar. Irish masons call this tool a hawk. . . '. Now. suppose that Hamlet declares that he can distinguish a mortar board, using the Elizabethan name for that tool, from a saw; that, is just the sort of broad distinction that may have been a popular saying. “He is wise enough to know a mason’s tool from a carpenter’s—a hawk from a handsaw.” Then, however, in characteristic manner, Hamlet plays a trick on the slow wits of his hearer. He puns on the word hawk and says that he can recognise this tool when the wind is southerly. His jest resembles that of the scholar in Elia when he met. a porter who was carrying a hare: “Prithee, friend, is that thy own hare, or a wig?” Is it not typical that Hamlet should prove his sanity by a sally which his dull hearer may take as fresh proof of madness? He is laughing in his sable sleeve. All this is lost if we postulate a corruption and insist flint handsaw be amended to hernshaw.

This is a book for the true lover of \horees, for the man who has lived among them and intelligently observed their habits and manners, and their widely varying characters. It will not appeal to those dull persons who regard horses as merely something to be ridden, and all. more or less, alike. The author of “The Wild Horses, ol Iceland” does not make the common writers’ mistake of attributing human human thoughts and motives to animals. He tries to fathom their minds which seem to work very differently from ours, and to understand their instinct so often in entire opposition to man’s reason. Mr. Fleuron arouses intense interest and sympathy with these horses, with their wild freedom, their joy of life, and their terrible hardships and . suffering. Humanity plays a minor part, in the book. Somehow one is almost inclined to resent the intrusion of man with his power to break, tame, banish and overwork, even to death, these creatures to whom the country seems naturally to belong. The story is written against a wonderful background that, at times, surges into the picture blotting out everything else. Behind all that happens lies always the menace of Iceland itself, stark and beautiful. Aloof, indifferent to life, it seems, with its towering cloud-bound mountains and mighty glaciers, its bleak fells and rushing ice-cold rivers, its almost theatrical effects of poppy-red lava, blue sky, white snow and the rare ghostly glory of northern lights.. There is an atmosphere of isolation from the world, and the render experiences an almost jarring feeling of surprise when the customary tourists begin to arrive in the summer. “The Wild Horses of Iceland’ is delightfully illustrated by Cecil Aldin, and the translation from the Danish has bean dona by E. Geo Nash.

Many people, says Professor Laseel'es Abercrombie,*have tried their hands at the history of English literature; but usually what they have produced has been either something that is not quite history or something that is not quite literallire

When we turn to the writers who have made a mark on the world, says Mr. Allan Monkhouse, we can. usually perceive some element of didacticism. Would Dickens. Shaw, or Galsworthy have done better work if they had been concerned simply with life as a spectacle or a succession of interesting phenomena?

Bernard Shaw tells an interviewer I hat he is too old to begin a new thing like writing a film. lie hasn’t time to tench the film companies their business. They assert that you can do anything in a film, but as soon as you say. “Very well, do this.” they say. "Oh. that can’t be done.

. Style, declares “The Times Literary Supplement,” is the salt of literature; and. if it be pure and simple, nny matter confided to it may be preserved indefinitely. But a substance there must be, for a dish of brine alone makes but a poor dinner.